Matrilineaology: Mother-daughter relationships in contemporary fiction
This thesis examines Dorothy Allison's Bastard out of Carolina, Louise Erdrich's The Beet Queen, Arundhati Roy's The God of Small Things, and Amy Tan's The Joy Luck Club to attempt to answer questions such as, "How do a mother's experiences prior to the birth of her daughter affect the way that she raises that daughter?" and "How does a mother's history affect her attitude(s) toward her daughter?" These questions are important because they lay the groundwork for the ultimate question that this thesis attempts to answer: "Will history repeat itself?" In addition to tracing history, this thesis will identify Nan Bauer Maglin's five themes of matrilineaology (258) within each of the four texts examined.
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