An aspect of “Mother” demonstrated in Chinese novels of 1990’s written by female writers

Choi Eun Jeong

doi:10.15792/clsyn..68.201504.137

This thesis looks into a mother showing her maternal instinct, identifying herself as a daughter's mother depicted in Chenlan and Xuxiaobin's works. The mother sacrificing herself for and dedicating herself to her daughter shows typical mothers mystified in a patriarchal society. Chenlan and Xuxiaobin, however, pay attention to different aspects of maternal instinct on the other side of maternal sacrifice and dedication. By depicting a mother wanting to own her daughter, and projecting her own desire in her daughter, Xuxiaobin reveals that the love shown ‘on behalf of her daughter’ actually started with the fear for losing her existential values, egoistic love-based desire for power and dominance. That is, her love is a result of narcism disguised in the name of maternal love. Narcism-motivated maternal love is infested with control, dominance and the desire for possession, inflicting misery upon both's lives. This proves that maternal love for children is, in fact, falsity. Especially, the authors demystify the maternal ideology by revealing that maternal dedication and love can become an object of terror to children. The maternal love with unconditional dedication or sacrifice as its attributes is questionable.

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REFERENCES (19)
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* 2021년 이후 발행 논문의 참고문헌은 현재 구축 중입니다.

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