Abstract
This paper analytically compares Morrison’s A Mercy (2008) to Albeshr’s Hend and the Soldiers (2006) to explore the maternal position in Western and Middle Eastern literatures and give the silent mothers voice. These novels depict rudimentary social systems predicated on deep inequalities of class and gender; they highlight the commonality of mothers’ experiences regardless of their class, race, or nationality. In A Mercy, the black mother discards her daughter to protect her from a malevolent master, while in Hend and the Soldiers, the uneducated Arab mother arranges her daughter’s marriage to free her from the domination of the patriarchal society. The daughters consider their mothers as toxic parents and relate all evil in their lives to them. These novels are narrated mainly from a daughter point of view, and they share the themes of the disintegrated mother-daughter relationship and search for identity. This type of narration foregrounds the daughterly perspectives and subordinates the maternal voice (Hirsch, 1989, p. 163). Applying the elements presented in Marianne Hirsch’s Mother/Daughter Plot facilitates the deconstruction of the idea of silent toxic mothers and gives mothers the opportunity to speak for themselves. According to Hirsch, when daughters become mature enough to accept their problems and failures, they become not only real women but also part of their mothers’ stories by listening carefully. Thus, I argue that mothers’ voices are heard when their subjectivity is explored through their stories narrated in their daughters’ memories, in the mothers’ self-vindication, and by surrogate mothers.
Highlights
Toni Morrison and Badriah Albeshr’s novels represent significantly different literature
Hirsch (1989) calls for giving silent mothers the opportunity to speak for themselves through exploring their subjectivity. She argues that novels narrated by daughters deny mothers voices; exploring the maternal discourse of identity gives mothers voice (p. 125)
Under patriarchy, females are usually defined as mothers, while their identity as individuals is disregarded
Summary
Toni Morrison and Badriah Albeshr’s novels represent significantly different literature The former was an African American novelist, essayist, book editor, and college professor who was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1993. This paper analytically compares Morrison’s A Mercy (2008) to Albeshr’s Hend and the Soldiers (2006), banned in Saudi Arabia and translated into English by Sanna Dhahir in 2017, to listen more closely to mothers’ voices in the Western and Middle Eastern literatures. It aims to reveal the nature of daughters’ resentment and hatred toward their mothers and to deconstruct the idea of the toxic mother through listening to the mothers’ voices. This paper puts the central trope of mother/daughter and the dilemma of maternal silence within a new comparative perspective highlighting the commonality between Western and Middle Eastern literature
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