Q2

How is the motherhood presented in any two or three stories in the collection?

-The Martyrdom of Helena Rodrigues

From the start of story,we can see that Helena is a mother that likes to control people judging by the way that she controls her husband. Her husband had died.Her next target was her own son.Helena would nurture in him a hypersensitiviy of conscience which bordered upon the pathological;she brought him up to believe that insult his mother's devotion to him was the ultimate blasphemy.Far more securely than her husband,Aloysius had been,George was kept tied to Helena's side. As he gets older, George met his lover and they wanted to get married. On the other hand Helena has fakes illnesses, but Helena's old friend Doctor de Cruz took them seirously and told terrified George thatt his mother's heart was not strong as she did not want George to get married. She wants George to always be by her side as she is lonely and needs company.

-Paper

The couple's desire of getting rich is destroyed when they play the stock market and lose everything. In a twist of fate, the husband's dream house is finally realized in the paper house that is burnt during his funeral for his afterlife. At the funeral, everything was set up, the house was well decorated with delicate framework of wire and thin bamboo strips covered with finely worked paper of myriad colours. There were silver flowers scattered liberally throughout the paper house which gave a carnival-like atmosphere. There was a paper swimming-pool which was put in the house. There were also paper figures inside the house. These things were what the Mother did for Tay Soon.