Mother-Daughter Relationships

Until recently, most mother-daughter relationships in German literature reflected the traditional family hierarchy in which women's lives revolved around the male. Mothers searched for suitable partners for their daughters, watched over their virginity, and taught them virtues and social graces. Daughters obeyed. If conflicts arose between the two at all, they very often stemmed from the mother's naive misguidance.' Literature has shown how mothers have prepared daughters to fulfill their vital function within the family and accept a passive role in society. What these fictional accounts neglected to deal with is the paradox of power which daughters inherit from mothers. We are rarely provided with a glimpse of the two-faceted reality which is perpetuated in women's lives: their influential position in the domestic sphere, and simultaneously, their socially and economically induced powerlessness.2 Only since more women have gained economic independence has the age-old model of womanhood been widely challenged in literature. At the same time, the relationship between mother and daughter, which has been treated marginally and two-dimensionally for so long, is being recognized in its depth and complexity.3 Helga Novak, Jutta Heinrich and Gabriele Wohmann have been among the first writers to focus on this issue. Their three novels Die Eisheiligen, 1979, (Novak), Das Geschlecht der Gedanken, 1977, (Heinrich) and Ausflug mit der Mutter, 1976, (Wohmann) are models of mother-daughter conflicts which uncover social realities by sharply revealing the nature and source of women's powerlessness, perpetuated in this relationship.4 The first novel, by Novak, shows how a mother's brutal child-rearing methods breed a lack of self-worth in a young girl. It also reflects upon the societal pressures which prevent a woman from deciding against motherhood and following other inclinations instead. The second novel, by Heinrich, attacks the hierarchy of the family structure as the source of women's powerlessness, and shows how this debility is traditionally transferred from the mother to the growing daughter. The third novel, by Wohmann, magnifies an older mother's lack of independence. The

Daughter · Genealogy · Political science · German Literature and Culture Studies · History · Law · Philosophy