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.
- ISBN10 0253327482
- ISBN13 9780253327482
- Publish Date 8 January 1989
- Publish Status Out of Print
- Out of Print 11 July 2009
- Publish Country US
- Imprint Indiana University Press
- Format Hardcover
- Pages 256
- Language English