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- Title
THE COMPLEXITY OF MOTHER-DAUGHTER RELATIONSHIP IN ALICE MUNRO'S DEAR LIFE.
- Authors
Antoņeviča, Jeļena
- Abstract
The present research concerns the phenomenon of mother-daughter relationship in Alice Munro's short story collection Dear Life. This short story collection is considered to be partially autobiographical, that is why mother-daughter relationship is presented through the prism of Munro's personal experience. In Dear Life, one figure is more distinct than any of the others, and that is her mother. The mother's long illness and death make the central trauma in this short story collection. Alice Munro is a critically well-regarded contemporary writer of short stories who was born in Canada in 1931. In 2013 Munro was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature as the master of the contemporary short story. Munro is acclaimed to be a feminist writer; moreover, she is considered to be among the first authors to portray the desire of young women for sexual autonomy. The two main theorists with whom the author of the present research is engaged in this research are Luce Irigaray (born in 1932) and Sigmund Freud (1856-1939). Luce Irigaray is one of the founders of poststructuralist feminist theory and a representative of ecriture feminine. She believes that all women have historically been associated with the role of mother so that, whether a woman is a mother or not, her identity is always defined according to that role. In her works, Irigaray discusses the mother-daughter relationship. She delves into serious and painful problems between daughters and mothers. According to Irigaray, although the childhood process of differentiation from the mother is always painful, daughters can accept this pain and can self-differentiate more easily than sons. Irigaray criticizes Sigmund Freud's theory of the lack of the sexual organ and penis envy, the penis being the only sexual organ of recognized value. Irigaray emphasizes the necessity for a woman to attempt by every means available to appropriate that organ for herself. Irigaray adds that sexuality has always been conceptualized on the basis of the parameters of the patriarchal world. She proposes a female sexuality which is disconnected from these parameters of sexual conceptualization. Concerning the problematics of mother-daughter relationship, Freud declares that the mother is the daughter's only love object in the pre-Oedipal stage, and the daughter's strong love for her mother will probably last till she is over four years of age. Irigaray opposes Freud's view of the pre-Oedipal mother-daughter relationship. She emphasizes that he focuses particularly on certain aspects that might be qualified as negative. Freud presumes the mother-daughter relationship has to be given up if the woman is to enter into the desire for the man-father. Irigaray contradicts Freud's penis-envy theory and describes it as completely pathological for the daughter to give up her love for her mother in order to enter into the desire for the father. Thus, Irigaray criticizes Freud's interpretation of the pre-Oedipal mother-daughter relationship. In the empirical part of the research, the author analyses the problematics of mother-daughter relationship in a short story To Reach Japan, the first story in Munro's short story collection Dear Life. The protagonist Greta suffers the maternal guilt as she betrays her daughter by leaving her alone in a car of a train to Toronto while enjoying the company of her lover. She regrets her misbehavior and frivolity. In To Reach Japan, Greta commits a sin against her daughter, her husband, and the values prevailing in the society of her time.
- Subjects
MOTHER-daughter relationship; IRIGARAY, Luce, 1932-; FREUD, Sigmund, 1856-1939; MUNRO, Alice, 1931-2024; SHORT story collections; WOMEN'S sexual behavior; MOTHERS; GENITALIA; YOUNG women
- Publication
Literature & Culture: Process, Interaction, Problems / Literatūra un Kultūra: Process, Mijiedarbība, Problēmas, 2021, Issue 21, p199
- ISSN
2243-6960
- Publication type
Article