The Mother / Daughter Plot: Narrative, Psychoanalysis, Feminism

by Marianne Hirsch

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.

Genres: Feminism, Nonfiction, Essays, Psychology, 20th Century, Theory

260 pages, ebook

First published January 8, 1989

About the author

Marianne Hirsch is William Peterfield Trent Professor of English and Comparative Literature, and Co-Director of the Center for the Critical Analysis of Social Difference, at Columbia University. She is the author of Family Frames: Photography, Narrative, and Postmemory, among other books. Leo Spitzer is Kathe Tappe Vernon Professor of History Emeritus at Dartmouth College, and the author of many books, most recently Hotel Bolivia: A Culture of Memory in a Refuge from Nazism."

Reviews

[zoe k]

This book is like the final boss where all the classics come together and are analyzed through a Freudian lens

[sarah ☆ · Rating 3 out of 5]

che noia

[Sherah · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book takes a strong psychoanalytic standpoint, and much of the argument is now dated. It is still essential reading in the field.