The Manifestation of Maternal Love in the French Literature

Despite the fact that the representation of maternal love was very weak and pale in the literature pertaining to the is" and 19^th centuries, one can see a reflection of maternal love in the literary works of Balzac and Flobert. The social position of mother and child during the 18^th and 19^th centuries was such that maternal love could not grow. The reason was the existence of digressive thoughts about the human child. In the French literature authors like Lafontaine had considered the human child as nonhuman. Gradually it is with the coming of thinkers such as Rousseau and Montesquieu, and also with the emergence of concepts concerning women's freedom, equality of women with men, and the like that child's value is taken into consideration. Thus the literature echoes and exalts the subject of maternal love in its everlasting literary works. The happy woman, in such literary works, is the one filled with maternal love.
When maternal love is traced in history and its present formation processes followed we arrive at this understanding that maternal love is an acquired phenomenon. This is not to say that maternal love is learned through lecturing but that feeling of such love has been with mothers in such a manner that now they feel that it is part of their personality.