Female Subjectivity and Mother–Daughter Relations

Abstract

In this article, Alison Stone reconsiders mother–daughter relations in the context of Christine Battersby's work, in which she attempts to resituate the female subject position as norm. Following Battersby's lead, Stone attempts to resituate the daughter's subject position as norm rather than as pathological, by virtue of the daughter's incomplete separation from her mother. It is argued that Luce Irigaray, who is also concerned to revalue mother–daughter couples, imagines them as harmonious and unified. It is necessary, instead, to understand mother–daughter relations as taking place within a web of power relations and antagonisms. Stone suggests that Marguerite Duras's semi-autobiographical novel The Lover (1984) provides a model of this understanding. Both in its content and its formal construction, the novel expresses a process whereby the daughter differentiates herself from her mother while remaining connected to her. It is an ongoing, unresolved and conflictual process in which the daughter never escapes the context of maternal body relations.

Keywords:

• mother–daughter relations
• maternal body
• Irigaray
• Duras
• écriture féminine
• Battersby