The psychoanalytic discovery of the importance of the pre-oedipal mother-daughter bond in the 1970s generated a vast amount of feminist theory attempting to identify the specificity of, and give value to, the daughter's relationship to her mother. At the same time women writers engaged in the complex task of representing this highly conflictual relationship which had been largely absent in women's narrative until then. Although much criticism has been written on individual texts, no systematic study of the development of this theme in Western European fiction exists.

This book...

The psychoanalytic discovery of the importance of the pre-oedipal mother-daughter bond in the 1970s generated a vast amount of feminist theory attempting to identify the specificity of, and give value to, the daughter's relationship to her mother. At the same time women writers engaged in the complex task of representing this highly conflictual relationship which had been largely absent in women's narrative until then. Although much criticism has been written on individual texts, no systematic study of the development of this theme in Western European fiction exists.

This book...

Women's writing has, in recent decades, been one of the most exciting and productive areas of literary creativity and critical analysis. Thirty years on from the initial, spectacular blossoming of women's writing and from pioneering critical projects to (re)construct a female literary tradition, Women's Writing in Western Europe: Gender, Generation and Legacy is the first study to investigate the legacy of this earlier generation of writers, texts and theories for contemporary women writers from across western Europe. This important and timely book brings together original analyses by...