| dc.description | In this article I wish to concentrate on the less often heard voices of older South Asian women by looking at the stories they tell about motherhood. Stories told by older women in West Bengal, from a mother's perspective, tend not to focus on the power of mothers and mothers-in-law, but on their powerlessness; not on the revered mother, but on the beggared and displaced one. I suggest that it is through such oral narratives that many Bengali women scrutinize and critique the social worlds they experience, giving voice to their experiences through the language of story. Many women come to believe, as they grow up and listen to the more dominant oral traditions and much of everyday talk, that becoming a mother-in-law and a mother of grown sons will lead to unparalleled freedoms, unquestioned authority, and devoted affection; but they encounter instead plaguing disappointments and troubling ambiguities. Their narratives form, then, a kind of subaltern voice, through which they present alternate visions of motherhood and a woman's old age, visions that contrast with the more official ones.or | eng |
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