Narratives of Mothering: Women's Writing in Contemporary France

by Gill Rye

Mothers appear everywhere in French literature, but they have primarily been portrayed from the perspectives of others. However, in contemporary woman-authored literature, mothers are now becoming narrative subjects in their own right. This book engages with this important new phenomenon by examining autobiographical and fictional narratives of mothering in literature by women on the cusp of the millennium, from the early 1990s through the first decade of the twenty-first century. It explores the themes that these literary narratives address and the issues they raise. It asks whether they reproduce dominant patterns and discourses or interrogate, challenge, and start to reinvent mothering. It also considers what they tell us about women's own desires, fears, anxieties, fantasies, and imaginative concepts of mothering as well as about how literature engages with the emerging trends and changing experiences of being a mother in contemporary France.

221 pages, Hardcover

First published May 1, 2009