Mother against Daughter and Daughter against Mother: Hostile Femininity in the Neo-Victorian Novel
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The idea that in the patriarchal world men overpower and limit women’s freedom is so obvious that has become a cliché. However, a closer look at the motherdaughter relationship, following the seminal works of such feminists like Adrienne Rich, Phyllis Chessler and Luce Irigaray, enables us to change the focus from male-female power struggle to the one within female genealogy, where mothers become not just the victims, but also the wardens of the patriarchal prison and perpetrators of the ‘punishment,’ thus leading the daughters either to ‘matrophobia’ or engulfment by the mother. The three neo-Victorian novels on which the paper will be focused represent three examples of deeply ambiguous and often hostile relationships between mothers and daughters. Firstly, in her novel Affinity Sarah Waters presents the world of a Victorian lady visitor in Millbank prison, who seems to be imprisoned by hostile and menacing femininity motherhood, and whose matrophobia makes her an easy target of Selina Dawes’ manipulation. Secondly, in Margaret Atwood’s Alias Grace, Grace’s mother is herself a stereotypical victim of gender roles and patriarchal oppression, becoming an antimodel for her daughter and preparing a foundation for a real mother figure in Grace’s life, Mary Whitney. In this case, Grace becomes engulfed by her second ‘mother.’ Thirdly, Michel Faber’s The Crimson Petal and the White presents an example of an abusive mother-daughter relationship and the resulting ‘matrophobia’ of the main character. All of these mother figures are shown from a perspective of their impact on the main characters’ female identity as well as their own attitude to other women later in life. In its conclusion, the paper will touch upon the issue of neo-Victorian novel as a genre, which as its aim has the preservation of female genealogy.