Woman as Mother, Woman as Other: Motherhood and
Marginalization in Select Works of Mahasweta Devi
Sanchita Saha,
Assistant Professor,
Department of English,
Nathaniyal Murmu Memorial College,
Dakshin Dinajpur, West Bengal, India.
Abstract: Motherhood has historically been venerated as a sacred
and universal symbol of nurture, sacrifice and emotional strength. In
literature, the mother figure often embodies unconditional love and moral
purity, reinforcing ideals that glorify her status as a mother while
simultaneously confining her periphery as a woman. In postcolonial Indian
literature, few writers have interrogated the complexities of motherhood with
as much urgency and nuance as Mahasweta Devi. This paper explores the complex
and often contradictory representation of women as both mothers and ‘others’ in
select works of Mahasweta Devi, particularly focusing on Breast-Giver, Mother
of 1084 and Giribala. In Breast-Giver, the protagonist Jashoda is both revered
and exploited by society, her maternal identity is commodified until her
physical and emotional capacities get exhausted. Mother of 1084 presents
Sujata’s transformation from a middle-class submissive, grieving mother to a
politically awakened individual, revealing the social exclusion and emotional
alienation experienced by mothers who deviate from normative expectations.
Giribala portrays motherhood in rural India as a site of both powerlessness and
resistance as the titular protagonist claims agency and control over her
children by breaking free from the oppressive familial knots. By juxtaposing
Breast-Giver (set in a post-feudal Bengali society), Mother of 1084 (urban,
politically volatile Calcutta) and Giribala (rural and tribal India), the study
seeks to demonstrate how the marginalization of the mother-figure transcends
regional, economic and cultural boundaries manifesting in diverse but
structurally similar ways. The paper argues that Mahasweta Devi reframes the
mother not as a passive nurturer but as a symbol of both victimhood and
resilience, an ‘othered’ figure who demands recognition and redefinition in
contemporary feminist discourse.
Keywords: Motherhood, Marginalization, Mahasweta Devi,
Maternal Identity, Resistance, Feminist Discourse.
Introduction:
Mahasweta Devi (1926-2016) was one of India’s most powerful literary voices, known for her activist literature that gave voice to the marginalized, tribal and oppressed people of India – especially women. A renowned author and committed social activist known for her compelling storytelling and fierce advocacy for marginalized communities, Mahasweta Devi uses fiction as a vehicle for social critique. Devi raises her voice for that section of society, whose stories often go untold. Devi employs motherhood as a literary and political device to interrogate systems of power, caste and gender. Within her body of work, the figure of the mother emerges not as a singular entity but as a fractured and contested identity shaped by systematic exploitation. Her stories expose how patriarchal, capitalist and caste-driven structures manipulate the maternal role to reinforce oppression, while simultaneously denying women autonomy, dignity and voice. The paper examines how Mahasweta Devi constructs and deconstructs motherhood in Breast-Giver, Mother of 1084 and Giribala. It argues that Devi portrays the mother as an ‘othered’ subject- glorified in rhetoric but marginalised in practice. Through close analysis of these texts, the paper explores the ways in which Devi challenges traditional representation of motherhood, revealing it as both a site of suffering and a potential space for resistance and transformation.
Literature Review:
The representation of motherhood in literature has been a
central concern in feminist criticism, where the maternal figure is often seen
as both a cultural construct and a site of ideological contestation. Scholars
such as Adrienne Rich, in her seminal work Of
Woman Born, argue that motherhood is a dual institution: one rooted in
personal experience and the other shaped by patriarchal control. This duality
resonates strongly in the works of Mahasweta Devi, where maternal identities
are negotiated within oppressive social systems. Critical discourse on
Mahasweta Devi’s fiction has largely focused on her portrayal of marginalized
subjects—particularly tribal communities and women. Scholars like Spivak (1985)
and Radha Chakravarty (2010) underscore Devi’s political engagement through her
literature, emphasizing how her narratives deconstruct hegemonic power
structures. Chakravarty notes that motherhood in Devi’s work is never static;
it is redefined by the socio-political context, often shaped by suffering,
servitude, and survival. In Breast-Giver,
Jashoda's role as a "professional mother" has drawn significant
scholarly attention. Critics argue that her commodified maternity—nourishing
over fifty children—is a scathing commentary on how society exploits maternal
labour under the guise of reverence. Jashoda is simultaneously glorified and
discarded, revealing the transactional nature of caregiving in patriarchal
economies (Meghwal, 2017; Khushboo & Pooja, 2024). Mother of 1084 has been read as a political and emotional journey of
a mother whose grief transforms into awareness. Sujata’s character has been
analyzed by Dipak Giri (2021) as emblematic of the silenced mother whose role
is to maintain decorum in bourgeois society. Her mourning for her Naxalite son,
Brati, becomes a medium to question state violence, familial hypocrisy, and
gendered exclusion from public discourse. In contrast, Giribala has received less academic focus, but scholars like Arpita
Ghosh (2020) have highlighted how the titular character’s experience as a mother
reflects the broader social abandonment of rural women. Giribala’s
resistance—escaping an abusive marriage and protecting her remaining
children—reclaims motherhood from being a site of victimization to one of
autonomy and courage. Together, these critical readings reveal a growing
recognition of Mahasweta Devi’s radical approach to motherhood. Rather than
portraying the mother as a passive symbol of virtue, Devi uses her as a tool of
subversion—challenging cultural myths and exposing the intersection of gender,
class, and caste in the shaping of maternal identities.
Methodology:
This research adopts a qualitative, interpretative
approach rooted in feminist literary criticism and postcolonial theory. It
involves close textual analysis of three key works by Mahasweta Devi—Breast-Giver, Mother of 1084, and Giribala – to explore the representation
of motherhood and the marginalization of women within various socio-political
and cultural contexts. Each selected text is examined for narrative structure,
character development, and symbolic representation of motherhood. Particular
attention is given to the language used to describe maternal experiences and
how these experiences intersect with issues of class, caste, and gender. The
study draws on feminist thinkers such as Simon de Beauvoir, Adrienne Rich and
Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak to interrogate the socio-political construction of
motherhood. Rich’s concept of the "institution of motherhood"
provides a critical lens to differentiate between personal maternal experience
and systemic maternal expectation. Influenced by Spivak’s theory of the
subaltern and Devi’s own activist background, this research situates the
maternal figure within the broader framework of postcolonial marginalization.
It examines how caste, class, and rural disenfranchisement shape the mother’s
identity and access to agency. By juxtaposing Breast-Giver (set in a post-feudal Bengali society), Mother of 1084 (urban, politically
volatile Calcutta), and Giribala
(rural and tribal India), the study seeks to demonstrate how the
marginalization of the mother figure transcends regional, economic, and
cultural boundaries—manifesting in diverse but structurally similar ways. By
combining literary analysis with critical theory, this study aims to reveal how
Mahasweta Devi’s representation of motherhood critiques dominant cultural
narratives and reclaims the maternal voice from invisibility and subjugation.
Discussion and Analysis:
Mahasweta Devi’s depiction of motherhood across Breast-Giver, Mother of 1084 and Giribala
reveals a profound tension between the idealization of maternal roles and the
social and emotional marginalization. Each narrative repositions the mother as
a figure of endurance, exploitation and resistance – challenging normative constructions
and exposing the socio-political machinery that renders women both central to
and excluded from societal value system.
1.
Jashoda in Breast-Giver: Motherhood as Commodity
and Marginalization
Mahasweta Devi’s Breast-Giver is a piercing critique of
how motherhood is constructed, consumed and abandoned in systems where class,
caste and gender intersect to produce layered marginalization. The story
revolves around Jahoda, a woman who becomes a professional wet nurse to sustain
her family, and in doing so, embodies the paradox of glorified yet exploited
motherhood. She is praised as a mother to breast-feed over fifty children, but
her maternal identity is stripped of autonomy. She is not a mother by choice,
but by economic coercion – a poor woman forced into lactation labour. As the
narrator notes: “Jashoda had breast-fed fifty children. She was a professional
mother” (Devi 224). This commodification of motherhood devalues its emotional
and biological significance, reducing it to a form of physical service, and
reinforcing how marginalized women are pushed into roles that serve the
dominant class. Jahoda adheres to patriarchal ideals despite her suffering. Her
devotion to her violent, unemployed husband is rationalized by the societal
belief that “a woman is a mother. That’s her job” (Devi 225). This refrain
reduces her entire identity to reproduction and caregiving, showing how
patriarchy conditions women to accept their own exploitation. As Jashoda
succumbs to breast cancer, Devi’s narrative metaphorically aligns the disease
with systematic draining of women’s bodies, challenging the myth of the
eternally giving mother. Her descent into illness and death marks her final
marginalization. She is abandoned by society including the very children she
raised, as Devi notes, “None of the fifty sons she had nursed came to see her”
(Devi 233). The final rejection emphasizes the transactional nature of maternal
reverence in patriarchal capitalist society. The symbolic ‘mother of fifty’ dies
alone, unmourned, revealing how society disposes of maternal figures once their
labour is exhausted.
2.
Sujata in Mother of 1084: Grief, Guilt and
Political Awakening
Mahasweta Devi’s Mother of 1084 explores a mother’s
journey from apathy to awareness, set against the turbulent political backdrop
of the Naxalite movement in Bengal. At its core is Sujata, the grieving mother
of Brati, a young revolutionary brutally killed by the state. Devi crafts
Sujata not merely as a bereaved mother, but as a symbol of womanhood
marginalized by patriarchy, class and state politics. Through Sujata’s
evolution from a silent wife and mother to a woman awakened to her son’s
ideology – the novel interrogates grief, guilt, political consciousness and
motherhood as a site of resistance. The novel begins with Sujata identifying
her son’s corpse by a number – “It is difficult to remember the day. The number
is easier. 1084. Just a number. Brati is now a number” (Devi 5). This reduction
of Brati to a statistic illustrates the state’s erasure of individuality in the
repression of dissent. Brati’s death acts as a trigger for Sujata’s political
reorientation, it forces her to re-evaluate her identity as a mother and a
woman. Her marginalization in the family is constant, her husband Dibyanath
dominates decisions, her other children dismiss her, and her grief is regarded
as inconvenient. In one scene, she reflects: “They all treat me as though I’m
mad, a sentimental woman who can’t get over her son’s death” (Devi 63).
Sujata’s voice, initially suppressed, gains agency only through rejection –
when she refuses to partake in her family’s performative rituals of mourning.
“I will not be part of this farce”, she declares (Devi 75). At this moment,
Sujata ceases to be a victim and becomes a political subject. Her motherhood,
no longer passive or symbolic, becomes a form of dissent. Sujata’s journey
mirrors what Antonio Gramsci might call a move from “common sense” to “critical
consciousness” (Gramsci 333). She evolves from being a marginalized woman to
someone who reclaims her voice through grief, memory and resistance.
3.
Giribala in Giribala: Rural Motherhood and Agency
Mahasweta Devi’s Giribala is a powerful short story that
foregrounds the lived realities of rural women in India. The story is a sharp
critique of the systematic oppression of women and presents a rural mother’s
journey from victimhood to self-assertion. Married off at a young age and
exploited by her husband, Aullchand, Giribala becomes a victim of both
patriarchy and poverty. Her daughters Belarani and Paribala are sold under the
guise of marriage or trafficking. The recurring refrain “A girl’s by fate
discarded, lost if she’s dead, lost if she’s wed” captures the tragic fate of
girls in rural India (Devi 64). Aullchand considers his daughters as monetary
assets, “an adolescent girl’s her father’s property”, selling whom he can build
a house (Devi 74). A rural mother has no right to her children, even in the
serious life-decisions of her daughter, like marriage. The controlling father
in Aullchand retorts: “It’s my daughter I’ve married off, so what’s it to any
of you?” (Devi 72). However, unlike Jashoda, Giribala does not remain a passive
victim. Her decision to sterilize her reproductivity marks a decisive break
from traditional gender norms, reclaiming autonomy over her body and her
eventual rebellion “why not sell off these three also? Enough money then for a
cement house” marks a stark resistance to patriarchal control (Devi 74). As
Giri suffers the same tragic loss of her second daughter as the elder one, she
decides to leave her husband grasping the remaining children to her bosom –
“Tell Pari’s father, he can rot for all eternity in his house” (Devi 84). In
this act of defiance, Devi crafts a maternal figure who claims agency and
dignity, who has moulded her maternal identity anew to take a bold stand to
protect her children. She doesn’t bother any more about the patriarchal community
which perversely blames the ‘woman’: “Why leave your husband and go away? What
kind of woman was that? Everyone is convinced that it’s not Aullchand but
Giribala who’s at fault. An indescribable relief fills them, all of them, when
they reach this conclusion” (Devi 84). Rather, as she walks on, she reminisces
about Belarani and Paribala retrospecting that if she had taken this step
earlier, she could have saved her daughters.
Devi presents Giribala’s resistance not as heroic in the traditional sense
but as deeply human. Her choice to leave Aullchand reflects a form of silent
rebellion that, while lacking political overture, profoundly challenges the
systems that marginalize poor, rural women.
Synthesis: Woman as Mother, Woman as Other
Across these three works,
Mahasweta Devi reframes the mother figure as both deeply central to society and
yet systematically devalued. Devi’s depiction of motherhood resonates strongly
with Simone de Beauvoir’s Self/Other theory. According to Beauvoir, patriarchal
society positions man as the absolute and woman as the other (de Beauvoir 26).
Whether urban or rural, upper caste or tribal, Devi’s mothers are constructed
as “others”—used, silenced, and displaced by the very systems that claim to
honour them. Rather than portray motherhood as a unifying or empowering
identity in itself, Devi shows how it is fractured by class, caste, and
economic status. However, in each case, the maternal experience also becomes a
site of resistance. Whether through bodily exhaustion, emotional awakening, or
silent departure, these mothers refuse to remain invisible. Devi’s narratives
thus reject romanticized portrayals of maternal virtue and instead expose the
lived realities of women whose identities as mothers are inseparable from their
social marginalization. In doing so, she challenges readers to recognize the
political dimensions of motherhood—and the power it holds when reclaimed from
institutional control. De Beauvoir argues that idealized motherhood serves as a
tool to confine women within roles that deny their agency (de Beauvoir 26).
Through characters like Jashoda, Sujata, and Giribala, Devi critiques how
patriarchy constructs and confines women’s roles, particularly in the guise of
motherhood. Where Jashoda is consumed by her role, Sujata and Giribala begin to
resist and reclaim agency. This mirrors Beauvoir’s call for women to become
Subjects—by refusing passive roles and asserting their existence beyond
patriarchal definitions.
Conclusion
Mahasweta Devi’s portrayal
of motherhood across Breast-Giver, Mother
of 1084, and Giribala challenges
the glorified and sanitized images of maternal identity often upheld by
patriarchal and cultural institutions. In her hands, the figure of the mother
becomes not a passive nurturer or moral emblem, but a deeply political
subject—exploited, marginalized, and, at times, radicalized. Through Jashoda’s
exploited body, Sujata’s political awakening, and Giribala’s quiet rebellion,
Devi reveals the multiple forms in which women as mothers are othered—by caste,
class, gender, and economic structures. These women are not only physically
burdened by motherhood but also symbolically silenced, expected to fulfill
roles imposed upon them without question or resistance. Yet Devi refuses to let
these mothers remain victims. Each character, in her own context, reclaims
agency—whether through defiance, awareness, or departure. In reframing
motherhood as a site of both oppression and resistance, Devi dismantles
essentialist narratives and offers a feminist, subaltern vision of maternal
identity. Her work reminds us that motherhood, far from being a monolithic or
purely nurturing experience, is deeply shaped by systems of power—and it is
precisely within these systems that resistance can be born. Ultimately,
Mahasweta Devi redefines the mother as a politically significant figure: one
whose suffering is real, whose voice has long been denied, and whose awakening
signals the possibility of transformative change. In doing so, she offers a
literary space where the woman as mother and woman as other need no longer be
mutually exclusive but can instead converge in powerful acts of survival,
memory, and resistance.
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