Mere et fille -- Des relations en question, ou la liberte a tout prix: Isabel Allende, 'La Casa de los espiritus', Nicole Brossard, 'Le Desert mauve', Sarah Kofman, 'Rue Ordener, rue Labat', Margaret Laurence, 'The Diviners'

The mother-daughter relationship is dual, ambivalent, a hall of mirrors; it is at once the site of the womb and maternity, a veritable matrix of meaning. The mother-daughter pairing moves through the body, constantly calling attention to its origins and valorising a transmission au feminin even from within a patriarchal society. However, it can also prove catastrophic. Though the mother is the first person with whom the daughter identifies---her first link to life---the daughter not only reacts to her, but also pushes against her. It would appear that this confrontation is necessary, that it allows the child to detach herself from the mother even as she models herself on her. In order to avoid a destructive union, the daughter must become conscious of the maternal love from which she must take her distance if she is to become someone, and more precisely, a woman. In the novels analysed here, the daughter's flight---her quest for independence from her mother---points to her need to create herself, to come into her own without destroying the mother-daughter bond. The notion of space is of the utmost importance in the discovery and (re-)establishment of this exclusive filial/maternal relationship. Space becomes the symbol of the mother and the antidote to filial solitude, a site of resistance, one to be conquered and understood, and thus an incentive to write the mother-daughter relationship. The symbolic matricide---depicted in these novels through the absence of the mother during the process of identification and the liberation of the daughter---ensures, a posteriori, the continuation rather than destruction of the filial/maternal relationship, as well as the affirmation of a female lineage.