explain the significance of the title 'Educating Mother'
Answers
Storytelling was once the domain of grandparents with twin objects of improving children’s vocabulary and imparting moral standards. However, today’s children are more intelligent and are of a technological bent of mind and they can no longer be silenced with old fantasies. That’s what this story is about. The story starts with the narrator being coaxed by her mother into telling a story to entertain the children of the household. The children included the narrator’s twelve-year-old daughter Ambu, her four-year-old son Ramu, her six-year-old niece Janaki and her three-year-old nephew Venku. The narrator starts with the story of ‘Goldilocks and the Three Bears’. The children are critical about the plot and the characters, and led by Ambu, they ask uncomfortable questions for which the narrator does not have answers. Ambu and Janaki analyse the story and come up with better alternatives, and the younger ones start getting interested in their version, and the narrator is forced to change the story. Then she starts narrating the story of ‘Red Riding Hood’. But the situation is no different, because the kids again scrutinise the story and find loopholes in the plot and suggest alternatives.
The narrator again switches to the story of ‘Jack and the Beanstalk’.