Skip to main content
Article
Licensed
Unlicensed Requires Authentication

Painful Interactions: The Elusive Mother-Daughter Relationship in Alice Munro’s “The Peace of Utrecht”

Published/Copyright: March 15, 2014
Become an author with De Gruyter Brill
Author Information
Zeitschrift für Anglistik und Amerikanistik
From the journal Zeitschrift für Anglistik und Amerikanistik Volume 60 Issue 4

Abstract

This paper deals with the narrative treatment of an obsessive theme in Alice Munro’s fiction: the mother-daughter relationship. There are two problematic sets of interrelations: the first one refers to the young daughter’s inability to deal with her mother’s neurodegenerative disease, the second one concerns the adult daughter, especially her revisiting of traumatic childhood experiences. Drawing on recent developments in psychoanalysis and developmental psychology this paper analyzes the way Munro presents family relationships, offering deep insights into her characters’ psychological development and discussing the causes of the adult daughter’s apparent failure to come to terms with her past.

Online erschienen: 2014-03-15
Erschienen im Druck: 2012-10

© 2014 by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co.

Articles in the same Issue

  1. Titelei
  2. Inhalt
  3. Editorial
  4. Minds at War, Minds in War: The Wartime Short Fiction of D.H. Lawrence and Wyndham Lewis
  5. Analyzing Graphic Novels in Terms of Complexity: A Typology
  6. Painful Interactions: The Elusive Mother-Daughter Relationship in Alice Munro’s “The Peace of Utrecht”
  7. Exit Strategies: Narrative Closure and Political Allegory in Lost and Battlestar Galactica
  8. “It’s About Being Connected”: Reframing the Network in Colum McCann’s Post 9/11 Novel Let the Great World Spin
  9. Buchbesprechungen
  10. Bucheingänge
  11. Die Autoren dieses Heftes
https://doi.org/10.1515/zaa.2012.60.4.361

Articles in the same Issue

  1. Titelei
  2. Inhalt
  3. Editorial
  4. Minds at War, Minds in War: The Wartime Short Fiction of D.H. Lawrence and Wyndham Lewis
  5. Analyzing Graphic Novels in Terms of Complexity: A Typology
  6. Painful Interactions: The Elusive Mother-Daughter Relationship in Alice Munro’s “The Peace of Utrecht”
  7. Exit Strategies: Narrative Closure and Political Allegory in Lost and Battlestar Galactica
  8. “It’s About Being Connected”: Reframing the Network in Colum McCann’s Post 9/11 Novel Let the Great World Spin
  9. Buchbesprechungen
  10. Bucheingänge
  11. Die Autoren dieses Heftes
Downloaded on 18.4.2026 from https://www.degruyterbrill.com/document/doi/10.1515/zaa.2012.60.4.361/html
Scroll to top button