Writing Mothers and Daughters: Renegotiating the Mother in Western European Narratives by Women by Adalgisa Giorgio (review)

Abstract

MLRy 99.4, 2004 1017 WritingMothers and Daughters: Renegotiating the Mother in WesternEuropean Nar? ratives by Women. Ed. by Adalgisa Giorgio. New York and Oxford: Berghahn. 2002. xiv + 258pp. ?46.77 (pbk ?15.59). ISBN 1-57181-953-3 (pbk r-57181341 -1)Contrary to Freud, in the beginning there was no Oedipus and his Father, but Persephone and her Mother Demeter. Moving from an eclectic but predominantly feminist stance, WritingMothers and Daughters explores the mother-daughter relationship in narratives written by women in seven Western European literatures (Spanish, Irish, Italian, French, English, and German-Austrian) during the last decades ofthe twen? tieth century. It starts by introducing a new maternal genealogy now advocated by current psychoanalytical critics, in particular Adrienne Rich, Marianne Hirsch, and, above all, Luce Irigaray. Irigaray comes to the conclusion that existing patriarchy suppresses maternal genealogy, thus separating women from each other. The establishment of a symbolic link between mother and daughter is essential ifwomen are to gain their own autonomy and give voice to their identity. Hence the need to consider a myth based not on the male child in relation to his father and mother, but on the daughter's relation to her mother. The need to organize the topic according to national boundaries within the stated chronological limits stems from the aim of the volume, which is to explore the repre? sentation of mother-daughter relationships in literarytexts, finding what is specific to this representation while setting them in their particular historical, social, ethnic, and political context. It is maintained that these factors have played a fundamental role in shaping the formation of women writers and in the reproduction of conflicts/tensions in a woman's filial relationship. The analysis focuses on the decades following the second wave of feminism in the 1970s, which gave rise to new possibilities forwomen and consequently an urge, in women authors, to explore this conflictual relationship in order to define one's own Self in its light. Yet, at times there is an implicit as? sumption that this urge stems from the quest of the writer herself as a daughter in search of an identity. But it is perhaps worth remembering that we are dealing with works of literature, and that there is a distinction to be made between the writer as woman/daughter and the literary representation of daughters in fiction. The firstchapter maps the theoretical territory,starting from Adrienne Rich's Of Woman Born: Motherhood as Experience and Institution (New York: Norton, 1976), which sets out the need for a theory encompassing cultural, historical, and social paradigms along linguistic-narratological and psychoanalytical lines. Before starting an exploration of the subject in specific national literatures, Chapter 1 traces the de? velopment of female perception in the feminist theories of the 1970s and looks back at its classical representations in Freud, Klein, and Winnicott, where the mother is viewed within a symbolic representation that sets the woman in relation not to herself or other women, but to man, particularly in the established central concepts of the 'phallic' (i.e. quasi-omnipotent) and 'castrated' (post-Oedipal) mother. Analysing this theme within national literatures is particularly useful as it high? lights social changes that have affected women over the past three to five decades in each country: laws, rights, varying degrees of political as well as familial repression and exploitation, perception, and enforcement of religious (male-oriented) values. The resulting picture shows what is nation-/culture-specific and what is, instead, specific to this relationship regardless of geographical boundaries. The narratives analysed seem to trace a general shift from matrophobia, which requests the silencing of the mother's voice, to a more balanced and less blameful, albeit conflictual, representation. The mother is often viewed as being compliant with the dominant oppressive order, transmitting its very values and enforcing them on her daughter. This produces the so-called 'mother-hating/-blaming' attitude in 1018 Reviews the daughter-protagonist/narrator. This conflict, however, is also determined by the need to break forcefully away from the person who, according to psychotherapeutical practices, exercises the most powerful influence on the daughter's acquisition of femininity, sexuality, and the definition of her own identity...