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Uneasy Possessions - The Mother-Daughter Dilemma in French WomenOs Writings, 1671-1928 (Hardcover)
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Uneasy Possessions - The Mother-Daughter Dilemma in French WomenOs Writings, 1671-1928 (Hardcover)
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In Uneasy Possessions: The Mother-Daughter Dilemma in French
Women's Writings, 1671-1928, Katharine Ann Jensen analyzes the work
of five major French women writers, discovering a four-century
pattern of mother-daughter relationships marked by domination,
submission, and conflict. This groundbreaking study explores work
of Marie-Madeleine de Lafayette, Marie de Sevigne, Elisabeth Vigee
Lebrun, George Sand, and Colette, providing a new reading of
women's history and offering a new understanding of female
psychology. Jensen argues that conflict between the mothers and
daughters depicted in these texts was the result of two
contradictory ideologies. In order to pass proper feminine behavior
on to their daughters, mothers were encouraged to construe
daughters as part of themselves, even as daughters were expected to
adopt their mothers' wishes as their own. At the same time, a
developing individualism created a conflict between the daughter's
desire for autonomy and her mother's wish to be recognized for
having raised a perfect daughter-alter ego. Despite vast changes in
social organization in France over the four centuries of this
study, the mother-daughter ideology remained effectively the same.
To keep their daughters virgins, mothers were expected to form
their daughters in their own image-as a mirror reflection.
Mother-daughter reflectivity extended even into the marriage bed,
as daughters were taught to remain faithful and to submit to (male)
authority throughout their lives. Thus, the daughter's sexuality
was channeled into producing legitimate offspring while the
mother's ambition was confined to working on her daughter, rather
than focused on creating cultural works that might compete with
men's. Mothers were rewarded with the narcissistic satisfaction of
viewing their filial creations as a socially sanctioned work of
art: daughters thus functioned as possessions.
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