Umothered Daughters in Search of The Self : Mother-daughter relationships and the construction of the self in Margaret Atwood´s The Robber Bride

Abstract

In my master´s thesis I study mother-daughter relationships and how mothering and non-mothering affect the development of a girl child to an adult in Margaret Atwood´s The Robber Bride from a psychoanalytic and feminist criticism point of view. In my opinion The Robber Bride is a feminist novel that discusses women´s oppressed position in a patriarchal society, especially the role of a mother in the family. Within the concept of mothering there is also contemplation between “the good'' and “the bad'' woman, where the mother has traditionally represented the good whereas the childless other woman is the bad woman. In The Robber Bride Atwood plays with these assumptions and presents three flawed protagonists and an evil robber bride. I have argued that these women have been left unmothered, because they all have mothers that have in one way or another abandoned them. This unmothering is the main cause for their low self-esteem and brokenness which allows the robber bride to enter their lives. Theoretical background is based on Adrienne Rich's Of Woman Born and Nancy Chodorow´s Reproduction of Mothering. Their work has been groundbreaking in the field of feminist psychoanalytic criticism