Returning To The Matrix:Mother-Daughter Relationships In Alice Munro's Five Fictions

The theme of mother-daughter relationship occurs frequently in Alice Munro's short fictions,signifying her constant inquiry into,as well as creative imagination of,the special bonding formed between females by mothering.In her fictions,Munro's exploration of this topic takes place in multiple dimensions.Not only is it revealed in the content of her works in which she portrays various mothers and daughters,but also in the methodology of the writing process,to the extent of questioning the human subjectivity constructed in the phallocentric language.The mother figure in Munro's works therefore signifies beyond biological mothers and reaches for the maternal influences repressed in the patriarchal society.In this sense,the collection of individualized mothers is suggestive of a more abstract concept,the matrix,which transforms personal memories into universal philosophical thinking.This thesis selects five autobiographical fictions from different phases of Munro's writing career and,in adopting the perspective of Julia Kristeva's psychoanalysis about the pre-Oedipal stage,attempts to demonstrate that Munro's exploration of the mother-daughter relationship in these five stories could be interpreted as her persistent pursuit of the hidden matrix,whose presence could be detected in the domain of society,psychology,language or the symbolic system as a whole.This thesis takes it as its first conclusion that the matrix is unattainable because it is imprisoned in abjection termed by Kristeva and rejected by phallocentric language.Individuals,female or male,who embody the subjectivity shaped by the patriarchal discourses,must dispel the maternal influences to adopt a stable identity.Meanwhile,to be a subject in the phallocentric system means to be an independent being,with clear boundary of selfhood,which is constantly challenged by the unconscious memory of the forbidden fusion state with the mother in the early stages of one's life.To maintain this precarious identity,daughters situated in the patriarchal system have no choice but to exile the matrix in a state of abjection;but at the same time,they could detect their innate connections with the repressed matrix in an unspeakable way.In The Peace of Utrecht and The Ottawa Valley,two of the early sketches of Munro,the narrating daughters find themselves confronted with this dilemma.Haunted by the feeling of abjection,they are unable to represent their dead mothers in memory without missing certain aspects of the truth,which finds its root in the phallocentric language that defines the matrix as the other.The thesis further argues that a new language is called for to present the nuanced relationship between mothers and daughters,into which the power of the matrix is released.In The Progress of Love and Friend of My Youth,the narrators replace the static episodes of memories with dynamic signifying processes which are motivated by instincts and drives deriving from the matrix and could break the boundaries of the subject to achieve a renewed subjectivity.In these processes,the narrative mode dominated by patriarchal logic is subverted,the consciousness of the daughters and that of the mothers intermingle,and the presumed judgments are questioned,revealing a narrative space that harbors the uncertainties in the matrix.Following the previous argument,the thesis concludes by maintaining that in Munro's Dear Life,the narrator reconstructs such a maternal space in reminiscence:a space where the terror of separation from the mother as well as that of fusion with her resides;a space with the potential to remodel the patriarchal system but is already structured by the ubiquitous phallocentric law.Paradoxes of this kind as revealed by the mother-daughter relationships in Munro's fictions result from a subjectivity constructed under the surveillance of patriarchal law that values more than necessary independence,and underestimates the significance of interdependence.To pursue the matrix and to endeavor to return to the matrix means to accept the maternal influences repressed but present in human subjectivity,which in turn will render the possibility of renewing the subjectivity.