Anti-Demeter Motherhood in Shashi Deshpande’s The Dark Holds No Terrors and Margret Atwood’s Lady Oracle

Abstract

This study aims to investigate how Shashi Deshpande's and Margret Atwood's works about parenting depict feminist viewpoints on motherhood. It is essential because, in contrast to other discourses, fictional writing is in fact able to reach the broad public and, as a result, may stimulate fresh discussions with far-reaching implications on the topic of motherhood at all levels of society. This is why it is important. Analysing how motherhood is portrayed in Lady Oracle and The Dark Holds No Horror, as well as how much they support or contradict a feminist stance on motherhood, can help determine whether or not they are feminist works. Feminist theories' central concepts of motherhood and mothering have been highly debated, contested, and changed throughout the last several decades. Several of these authors have found the courage and inspiration to deviate from standard patriarchal patterns in order to show how women have been mistreated, taken advantage of, and oppressed due to the women's movement. While Mary Wollstonecraft voiced the first doubts about parenting in her 1792 essay "A Vindication of the Rights of Woman," a more significant movement wasn't founded until the 1960s.