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The paradigms of gender, family, and ageing began shifting in the late twentieth century due to social, theoretical, and technological changes in a globalized world. In India, where ‘family’ and ‘motherhood’ are idealized, literary explorations of parental ties emerged in the post-independence period. The mother–child relationship thus became central to feminist, psychoanalytic, and gerontological inquiry. This paper applies feminist psychoanalysis and gerontology, drawing on Nancy Friday, Nancy Chodorow, and K.L. Fingerman, to examine the mother–daughter dyad in Eunice De Souza’s A Necklace of Skulls (2009). Through close readings, it analyzes psychological bonding and unresolved conflicts shaping the daughter’s subjectivity, alongside shifts caused by ageing, social expectations, and caregiving roles. The paper argues that the daughter is ever connected to the mother not only through developmental stages like the oedipal phase, but throughout her life, where the daughter is expected to assume the role of caregiver.
Rakshita Nain. “THE SELF AND THE MOTHER IN THE POETRY OF EUNICE DE SOUZA.” The Criterion: An International Journal in English, vol. 17, no. 2, Apr. 2026, pp. 601–616. DOI, https://doi.org/10.66376/criterion.v17.n2.38.
Open Access · CC BY 4.0 · Crossref DOI ·
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