ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses family and artistic relationships between mothers and daughters to outline the dominant narrative models through which daughters either glorify their mothers’ lives and their relationships with them or seek a reckoning with their mothers and their shared past. Key issues include daughterhood as an emotional category, the mothers’ role as ancestors and daughters’ role as inheritors of artistic and family relationships. Mother-daughter relations are positioned on the scale of altruism and egocentrism. A daughter’s mourning of her mother is presented as a process that uproots the bereaved from her everyday life and initiates a transition in her life.
