The Mother Daughter Plot

Mothers and daughters -- the female figures neglected by classic psychoanalysis and submerged in traditional narrative -- are at the center of this book. The novels of nineteenth- and twentieth-century women writers from the Western European and North American traditions reveal that the story of motherhood remains the unspeakable plot of Western culture. Focusing on the feminine and, more controversially, on the maternal, this book alters our perception of both the familial structures basic to traditional narrative -- the Oedipus story -- and the narrative structures basic to traditional representations of the family -- Freud's family romance. Confronting psychoanalytic theories of subject-formation with narrative theories, Marianne Hirsch traces the emergence and transformation of female family romance patterns from Jane Austen to Marguerite Duras.

Includes information on anger, Margaret Atwood, Emma (Jane Austen), authority, The Awakening (Kate Chopin), Beloved (Toni Morrison), Nancy Chodorow, Clytemnestra and Electra, death, Demeter and Persephone, Daniel Deronda (George Eliot), Marguerite Duras, Everyday Use (Alice Walker), family romance, father, femininity, gender difference, heterosexuality, Luce Irigaray, Julia Kristeva, male, males, masculine, men, marriage plot, maternal, Oedipal theory, Oneʼs Own (Walker), patriarchy, plot, plot (female), pre-oedipal, procreation, Adrienne Rich, romance (love) plot, A Room of Oneʼs Own (Woolf), Sara Ruddick, separation from mother, Sula (Morrison), Susan Rubin Suleiman, Surfacing (Atwood), To the Lighthouse (Woolf), triangular relationships, voice, Edith Wharton, Christa Wolf, Virginia Woolf, etc.

Famed feminist Marilyn French’s life-affirming saga celebrates the love and sacrifices of four generations of Polish-American mothers and daughters. With Bella Dabrowski close to death, her daughter Anastasia, who has reinvented herself as Stacey Stevens, is trying to penetrate the longstanding barriers between them to understand the woman who gave her life. Through the eyes of Stacey, a divorced, feminist New York photographer, we get to know Bella, a remarkable woman, wife, and mother. The daughter of Polish immigrants, Bella, who renamed herself Belle, clawed her way out of poverty and settled into a middle-class existence. Shifting perspectives between the two women, the reader is drawn into Belle’s life through the lean years of the Depression as well as Stacey’s recollections of her youthful marriage, a lesbian affair, and her tempestuous relationship with her own daughter, Arden. From the groundbreaking author of The Women’s Room, Her Mother’s Daughter explores past and present to reveal the complex, indestructible bonds between daughters and mothers.

NATIONAL BESTSELLER "A phenomenal, human story. . . . I could not put this book down." —CLARA HUGHES An instant national bestseller, this raw and affecting memoir is the story of a mother and daughter who beat the odds together. Decades before Perdita Felicien became a World Champion hurdler running the biggest race of her life at the 2004 Olympics, she carried more than a nation's hopes—she carried her mother Catherine's dreams. In 1974, Catherine is determined and tenacious, but she's also pregnant with her second child and just scraping by in St. Lucia. When she meets a wealthy white Canadian family vacationing on the island, she knows it's her chance. They ask her to come to Canada to be their nanny—and she accepts. This was the beginning of Catherine's new life: a life of opportunity, but also suffering. Within a few years, she would find herself pregnant a third time—this time in her new country with no family to support her, and this time, with Perdita. Together, in the years to come, mother and daughter would experience racism, domestic abuse, and even homelessness, but Catherine's will would always pull them through. As Perdita grew and began to discover her preternatural athletic gifts, she was edged onward by her mother's love, grit, and faith. Facing literal and figurative hurdles, she learned to leap and pick herself back up when she stumbled. This book is a daughter's memoir—a book about the power of a parent's love to transform their child's life.

This first systematic study of mother-daughter relationships as represented in Western European fiction during the second half of the 20th century provides a comparative study of works from England, France, Germany, Austria, Ireland, Italy, and Spain. For each individual body of texts, the authors identify characteristics arising from specific national literary traditions and from internal cultural diversities. The text suggests avenues for future investigation both within and across national boundaries. The featured writers include Steedman, Diski, Winterson, Tennant, de Beauvoir, Leduc, Djura, Wolf, Jelinek, Mitgutsch, Novak, Lavin, O'Brien, O'Faolin, Morante, Sanvitale, Ramondino, Chacel, Rodoreda, and Martin Gaite. The six contributing authors are scholars from New Zealand, England, Ireland, Italy and Wales. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

Acclaimed author Heather Vogel Frederick will delight daughters of all ages in a novel about the fabulousness of fiction, family, and friendship. The book club is about to get a makeover.... Even if Megan would rather be at the mall, Cassidy is late for hockey practice, Emma's already read every book in existence, and Jess is missing her mother too much to care, the new book club is scheduled to meet every month. But what begins as a mom-imposed ritual of reading Little Women soon helps four unlikely friends navigate the drama of middle school. From stolen journals, to secret crushes, to a fashion-fiasco first dance, the girls are up to their Wellie boots in drama. They can't help but wonder: What would Jo March do?

From the New York Times bestselling author of the Maggie Hope series comes a tantalizing standalone novel inspired by a real-life mother-daughter duo who stumble upon an underground Nazi cell in Los Angeles during the early days of World War II—and find the courage to go undercover. “Stirring . . . Susan Elia MacNeal’s page-turning prose is as entertaining as ever—I was riveted from beginning to end.”—Kate Quinn, author of The Alice Network June 1940. France has fallen to the Nazis, and Britain may be next—but to many Americans, the war is something happening “over there.” Veronica Grace has just graduated from college; she and her mother, Violet, are looking for a fresh start in sunny Los Angeles. After a blunder cost her a prestigious career opportunity in New York, Veronica is relieved to take a typing job in L.A.—only to realize that she’s working for one of the area’s most vicious propagandists. Overnight, Veronica is exposed to the dark underbelly of her new home, where German Nazis are recruiting Americans for their devastating campaign. After the FBI dismisses the Graces’ concerns, Veronica and Violet decide to call on an old friend, who introduces them to L.A.’s anti-Nazi spymaster. At once, the women go undercover to gather enough information about the California Reich to take to the authorities. But as the news of Pearl Harbor ripples through the United States, and President Roosevelt declares war, the Grace women realize that the plots they’re investigating are far more sinister than they feared—and even a single misstep could cost them everything. Inspired by the real mother-daughter spy duo who foiled Nazi plots in Los Angeles during WWII, Mother Daughter Traitor Spy is a powerful portrait of family, duty, and deception that raises timeless questions about America—and what it means to have courage in the face of terror.

"Tender and unsparing, this is a novel to hold onto." —Crystal Hana Kim, author of If You Leave Me “A masterfully written novel, alive and lyrical, a hypnotic rendering of the mess and the tenderness of family life.” —Claire Lombardo, author of The Most Fun We Ever Had A novel about family secrets and a volatile relationship between a mother and her daughters. When Anna’s sister calls with an urgent message, Anna doesn’t return the call. She knows it’s about their mother. Growing up in working class Boston in an Italian American family, Anna’s childhood was sparse but comfortable—filled with homemade pasta sauce and a close-knit neighborhood. Anna and her sisters are devoted to their mother, orbiting her like the sun, trying to keep up with her loving but mercurial nature as she bounces between tenderness and bitterness. When their father gets a new job outside the city, the family is tossed unceremoniously into a middle-class suburban existence. Anna’s mother is suddenly adrift, and the darkness lurking inside her expands until it threatens to explode. Her daughters, trapped with her in the new house, isolated, must do everything they can to keep her from unraveling. Alternating between childhood and Anna’s twenties, when she receives a shattering call about her mother that threatens to blow up her own precariously constructed life in New York, Mother in the Dark asks whether we can ever really go back home when the idea of home is so unstable. Whether we can escape that instability or accept that our personalities are built around the defenses we put up. Maiuri is a master at revealing the fragile horrors of domestic family life and how the traumas of the past shape the present and generations of women. A story about sisterhood, the complications of class, and the chains of inheritance between mothers and daughters, Mother in the Dark delivers an unvarnished portrayal of a young woman consumed by her past and a family teetering on the edge of a knife.