MARLO T.

DOMANAS

21st Literature Performance Task

Motherhood

In the short story Motherhood by Talisma Nasrin, represents the conflicts between the cultural norms and
human rights of the family. A childless marriage, a marriage that is being tear apart for the inability to produce
children for a long time by the husband’s family. And a woman getting oppress for being infertile. As he faced
humiliation, degradation, and humility by her family and relatives especially her mother-in-law. The short story
mainly points the customary of their culture that a woman’s importance task is to give birth a child into the
family and serve the husband’s family for a lifetime. One should be accepted and being cared in the family
whether one is infertile or not because that is what a family do. As being express in the story the social status of
a woman who’s unable to conceive a baby I most likely to be an outcast and shame to the family clan. The
mindset of the family is stuck on what the history taught them that a woman/wife’s first task is to serve under
husband’s rule and be submissive. In their culture and beliefs, a man who had tied the knot to a barren woman
seem to be a misfortune that happened to him. As the story goes by it turns out that it was his husband who was
infertile by getting tested in the hospital but because the lack of acknowledgement from his husband, it still
turned out it was her fault. The story also discusses about how the woman’s family does not believe what the
doctor said but believe on the dishonesty that is disguised to be so called miracle giver in the worst it is using
God’s name to rape women. Thus, it also shows in the story that women are not allowed to speak their mind and
does not have the right to protect themselves and their dignity. Their cultural norms display that women are
subjected to be slaves of their husbands, relatives and the society. History and ignorance play a big role in this
story because it made the society to be trapped on the old ways and not willing to change for the sake of beliefs
and ancestors.

In conclusion, the short story Motherhood by Talisma Nasrin gives us a look what is going on a childless
marriage and how does it feel in the toxic family. The short story is also a great eye opener for all of us in the
aspect of marriage, family treatment, medical health and culture.

The characters economic status is in the low and middle class in the society and this is the mother and her in-
laws and they treat the mother rubbishly and abusively because she cannot bear a child for them while the other
characters such as pir are the highest economic status just like in reality where men are higher than women. As
a result of this is that they are trapped with their old beliefs and their history which they are not easily persuaded
by the development of the society. For example, they prefer to seek advise from fake healers rather than doctors
from the hospital which lead the mother into being raped by Pir and the mother cannot tell anyone because they
will not believe her either that’s why she kept quite.

From the point of economic they think that children will make or give them good fortune in the future that can
raise them from poverty and from suffering, while in political view is the struggle between men and women
where in there is no equality and men have the higher rank than women and they are not part of any decision
making just like how the husband rejected on the test that his wife wanted to know the truth but instead the
husband denied it and how they treated the mother so abusively in the story because she is a women and women
in reality don’t have power or don’t get to have proper justice ,freedom, solidarity and more .That women are
not given opportunities to be part of the family or the society like making decisions or the right to protect
themselves that is how women are just being used by higher ranks of men. The power relations are based on
masculinity wherein men stand tall to be served only by women and their decisions are the only thing that
matters and the relatives of the men also take power over the woman’s standing in the family especially if the
woman is barren or in other words not useful to them that is why her husband and her in-laws treated her bad
and talked rubbish at the mother for not being able to give birth. Men are also part of the society that can also
make mistakes and make bad impact on the society as well as to their family. Yes, there is but the thing is the
rich or old alienate poor or young peoples’ ideas or decisions. Poor, women, decision making, dignity and many
others to mention were left out because only the rich or men remain strong and making progress than the others.
That is why poor people especially women are being treated like a rug and that they are not encluded to be part
of the society