Ok so I'm watching Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayengea and around 1h35m into the movie, the protagonist's mom has a conversarion with her and tries to convince her to marry a man she doesn't love. Now, in the outcome of this overly sentimental and somewhat cheesy scene, our heroine Simean finally accepts her arranged marriage to stranger. But what's most interesting here is how intergenerational trauma shared between mothers and daughters is portrayed. I am not of Indian or South Asian descent myself, so I cannot and will not comment on the specific cultural elements in play here. Though they are key and crutial to both the film and real-life mother and daughter relations within said context, it is not my place to talk about those specifics. Instead, I'll speak of mother-daughter realations in broader terms, and some of the points I have observed through real life and media.
I think the core of the (most often than not) inherently traumatic relationships between mothers and daughters is presented in this scene: Simra's mother wants, in short, for her daughter to be happy. That's reasonable, right? That's what any good mother should want for her children. Now, this is actually more complex: she (at least partly) wants her daughter to be happy because she was denied said happiness. In a way, mothers, frustrated in their attempt to succeed in their desires due to patriarchal pressures, look for fullfilment of the dreams they never reached through their daughters. In DDLJ, this is shown when Simran's mother states that her own life (a woman's life) is lived in constant sacrifice of her own wishes for men's welfare and wishes. She says she promised herself this would never happen to her daughter and in an honestly heartbraking statement she says she "forgot that a woman doesn't even have the right to make promises", and then goes on to talk about how much women sacrifice for men who never sacrifice anything for them.
Now, the thing here and second reason why in my opinion mother-daughter relationships tend to be so complicated and so strongly rooted in a sort of sociopsycological trauma: the mother not only wants to live her frustrated expectations through her daughter, but at some point they both realize this can never be fully realized. On one hand, the daughter might succeed in achieving her dreams (and this will lead the mother to feel both joy, envy, and more). On the other hand, the daughter might not succeed and therefore both the mother and daughter's hopes will die together/passed down to the next generation. To this you must also add that what we demand of womanhood changes with time, place and context, so even without the addded pressure of the mother's expectations, the daughter will most likely end up with her own share of frustrations and broken dreams. The socio-psychological trauma, along with the particular hopes and frustrations of the mother and daughter are in practice both augmented and determined by factors other than gender, such as ethnicity, immigration or something as apparently simple as the mother being closer in age to the daughter.
In DDLJ, the mother comes to terms with the harsh realities of womanhood as she grows up, but ultimately puts all her faith in the idea that these won't be so hard on her daughter. However, ultimately, her daughter has to sacrifice her happiness, and thus her mother's hopes as well. Now, in the novie it all ends up good: Simran gets with the guy she truly loves and there's happily ever after. But this particular scene showed a side of mother-daughter relationships and how they are tinted with the symbolic violence of patriarchal system, which I don't see very often represented in mainstream media.
jacobvanloon
yousharknotpass
titsay
dailybridgerton
janainaart
areudirty
