The unbreakable bond: Absent/present mothers and daughters in the fiction of Margaret Atwood, Toni Morrison, Amy Tan and Daphne Merkin

My study explores the relationship between mothers and daughters in the fiction of four contemporary women novelists. In the chosen texts, the primary factor that affects the bond between mother and daughter is the absence of one character for the other. This absence is not always literal, but subtle and often subliminal. A mother can be physically present and yet, undeniably absent to her daughter. Such absence signals a lack of connection between these women, a connection that is vital to both their identities and survival. The purpose of this study is to see how such absence and presence become imbricated in the narratives of these mothers and daughters, tying their worlds intimately together.;My analysis is feminist in nature; it aims to uncover the complexity and ambiguity in the mother-daughter bond through the motif of absence and presence. The mothers I examine are complex, contradictory and vulnerable, like their daughters. The troubles between absent and present mothers and daughters in these-novels ironically reinforce the continuity and connection between these women; this intricate link continues to animate the contours of their lives in intricate ways. Margaret Atwood's Cat's Eye and Daphne Merkin's Enchantment are written primarily from the daughter's point of view; Toni Morrison's Beloved and Amy Tan's The Kitchen God's Wife foreground the voice of the mother. That doesn't mean we hear only one single voice in these texts; they are multivocal and plural in that they reflect voices of absent and present mothers and daughters. The four authors are from different ethnic and cultural backgrounds; they are not meant to be "representative," though the difference in their backgrounds contribute to the richness and multiplicity of the characters and their relationships that is our topic. Three of the writers (Atwood, Morrison and Tan) have been the subjects of current critical attention by both feminists and other literary critics; Daphne Merkin has received little if any critical attention. In the former case, I attempt to bring a new perspective to the works of well-known writers; in the latter, to give an unjustly neglected writer the attention she merits.