Motherhood as Cultural Institution: Female Education, Gender Socialization and the Intergenerational Transmission of Values in Abdulla Qodiriy’s Mehrobdan Chayon

The novel Mehrobdan Chayon by Abdulla Qodiriy has been studied mostly as a historical, social and literary text, and its representation of motherhood and women as agents of cultural transmission has received little scholarly attention. This article suggests that Qodiriy presents motherhood not primarily as a biological relationship but as a cultural institution, in which Uzbek society is reproduced across generations in terms of literacy, religious and literary canon, comportment and marital expectation. The analysis, based on close reading of three figures, i.e., the neighbourhood girls’ teacher, Nigor oyim; the educated daughter, Ra’no; and the marital-futures-managing woman, Mohlar oyim, and an interdisciplinary cultural-studies approach, demonstrates that the maternal line functions as the novel’s mechanism of cultural continuity, transmitting both knowledge and social constraint. The article adds a Central Asian case to the study of motherhood and rethinks Qodiriy’s domestic scenes as the place where Uzbek womanhood is reproduced and reformed.