Attempt a critical analysis of the story ‘A Mother in India.’

The lack of spontaneity and an attempt at propriety is glimpsed when the mother comments: “we were in such terror, not so much of failing in our duty towards her as towards the ideal standard of mankind”. When she was just five weeks old, Cecily had fallen so sick that she had to be sent to England. Sara Jeannette Duncan had given birth to a child in 1900, at the age of 37. Unfortunately, the child died within few days of the birth.

Perhaps this late pregnancy had embarrassed Duncan and influenced the maternal ambivalence she displays, when she comments: “Since an unfortunate [perhaps because it is unwanted] infant must be brought into the world and set adrift” . Mrs. Farnham proposes to meet her daughter after four years. And, surprisingly, the milk of motherly affection flows in abundance. . Perhaps the intervening period has thawed and mellowed her.