The following article analyses Kate Atkinson’s postmodern novel Human Croquet in the light of Luce Irıgaray’s theories “The society is based on the murder of the mother” and the one upon the problematic mother-daughter relationship in the patriar

A Novel Cannot Replace the Navel:
Irigaray Between the Lines of Kate Atkinson’s Human Croquet
The following article analyses Kate Atkinson’s postmodern novel Human Croquet in the light of Luce Irıgaray’s theories “The society is based on the murder of the mother” and the one upon the problematic mother-daughter relationship in the patriarchal society. Luce Irigaray’s footsteps are found throughout the novel. The narrator, Isobel falls into a coma and we read her dreams consisting of made-up stories during her blackout. According to her stories, Isobel’s father, Gordon murders her mother Eliza, but Isobel does not remember the criminal act or rather, represses the whole event. The other characters of the story murders Eliza through gossiping and slandering her. The whole family, as the cell of the society, is based on murdering Eliza continuously for sustaining the order. Nevertheless, Isobel creates a totally distinctive mother figure she can identify with. Anything lacks in Isobel (such as femininity, extraordinariness, assertiveness) is found in the portrayal of Eliza. However, no matter how long the stories take, even the length of a novel, the attachment as stong as a natural bond, the navel cannot be achieved by Isobel. Her portrayal of Eliza is always fragmented. Her good mirrors turn into bad ones, and she indirectly murders them in her stories. This is again a reference to Irigaray, who claims that the navel is being replaced by the naming process in the symbolic order but it should not be so. Isobel’s stories rewriting the fairytales filling the novel, is a creation in the realm of the symbolic order, which cannot replace her natural tie with her mother, the navel, though. So as to the murder of the mother issue, it happens literally and also on a symbolic level. The whole of the characters, including Isobel herself as the omnicient narrator, continuously murder Eliza, with or without words. Beyond the fruits of a theoretical reading, quite clear references to Luce Irigaray’s discussions such as the one with E=mc2 is found utilized on a literary level. Luce Irigaray was being criticized for her claims in 1997, which is also when Human Croquet was published.
After the 80ies, the English Novel undergoes a certain change in terms of the way it handles the mother and daughter relationship. After poststructuralism, all of a sudden, we have lots of novels especially by female writers, in which the central characters, protagonists are mothers or daughters. Considering the majority of the novels written before the mentioned time period, one can say that the mother and daughter relationship throughout the literature had been fragmented. Especially the Victorian Novel is a perfect example to that. The issue of orphans with lost mothers had been prevailing throughout the literary pieces, especially the Bildungsromans. The examples to the previous assertion are; Jane Eyre, Phil in Great Expectations, Heathcliff in Wuthering Heights, etc. There are many orphans, lost mothers, but also, many characters who afterwards become mothers. However, no natural tie is again seen.
In the literary piece, Of Woman Born: Motherhood as Experience and Institution, Adrienne Rich claims that the feminists of the 60ies and 70ies distanced themselves from their mothers in order to establish a sisterhood consisting of the feminists of the time. Actually, they did not know where to locate their mothers, who are both victims and upholders of the patriarchal order. Nevertheless, in the aforesaid literary piece which was published for the first time in 1977, Rich stated that the mother-daughter relationship needs to be recovered. She said: “Before sisterhood, there was the knowledge transitory - fragmented, perhaps, but original and crucial - of mother-and-daughterhood.”1 Moreover, the French theorist Luce Irigaray also drew attention to the same issue, though from a psychoanalytic perspective.
It is necessary, therefore, to create an ethical order among women that will have at least two dimensions: a vertical one, the genealogical mother-daughter axis, and a horizontal one, the well-know axis of sisterhood.2
While Jacques Lacan claims that the mother-daughter relationship is a problematic one (because “the I” the girl identifies with is already the other), Luce Irigaray takes a step forward and says that it is possible to change it through Language. Thus, she deconstructs Plato and Freud’s works for her PhD thesis and reveals the blind spot: the Female. While Freud states that the society is based on the murder of the father, Irigaray claims that it is actually the murder of the mother that takes place beforehand. Just like Freud’s pick, Oedipus Rex; she choses a tragedy, Oresteia, and says that something must had preceeded the murder of the father. It is the murder of the mother on a symbolic level. As Apollo claims that the mother is not the true parent of the child, as Athena justifies Orestes, as such blind spots are found, the mother had already being murdered, according to her. The symbolic stage, to which the child enters by the time the umbilical cord was cut, is filled with gender based stereotypical signifiers starting with the name and afterwards, “the I” to identify. Going beyond Lacan’s descriptive assertions, Irigaray says that it is not stable. We can change it, through Language.
That is to say, the mother-daughter relationship became a greater issue in the world of letters especially during the 90ies. Because at the time it was seen that it was crucial to work through Language, the symbolic order in order to establish a stronger and more “healthy” mother and daughter relationship. If the girl identifies with her mother who is already the other, this is problematic for her own self-made identity.
According to many scholars, the novel Human Croquet by Kate Atkinson may be read as a rewrite of Irigaray’s theories upon the problematic mother-daughter relationship and her claim “The society is based on the murder of the mother”. Because the mother in the novel, Eliza is murdered symbolically and literally and her fictive relationship with the daughter, Isobel is quite fragmented. In order to change the mother’s stance as a negative mirror to the daughter, one should start with changing the Language through playing with it; producing new stories struggling with and stressing the stereotypical signifiers, according to Irigaray. In other words, the women should invent a new language and the genealogy of women to stress the symbolic order. Luisa Muraro, in her article “Female Genealogies” explains Irigarays theory of the genealogy through quoting from her.
1 Adrienne Rich, Of Woman Born: Motherhood as Experience and Institution (New York: Norton, 1976), 225-226.
2 Luce Irigaray, Ethics of Sexual Difference (New York: Cornell University Press, 1993), 106.

This is a double genealogy. There is a genealogy based on procreation, which binds us to the mother, to her mother, and so on, maternity functioning as the structure of a female continuum that links us to the origins of life. [...] The other genealogy is based on words. "Let us not forget, moreover, that we already have a history, that certain women, despite all the cultural obstacles, have made their mark upon history and all too often have been forgotten by us.”3
In the light of all these theories, it can be claimed that the novel Human Croquet by Kate Atkinson is also an urge to contribute to this movement, by utilizing the issues of “the murder of the mother” and the problematic mother and daughter relationship in a literary piece.
The narrator of the novel, Human Croquet is Isobel. However, we have Isobel the daughter and Isobel the omnipotent as narrators changing between different chapters. The daughter, Isobel, continuously questions the whereabout her lost mother, Eliza. According to the Widow, who is the mother of Gordon (the father) and the Aunt Vinny; Eliza eloped with “her fancy man”. The only information these two people give to the children are negative ones, like this, and nothing more. Eliza, according to Isobel’s narration apart from what the other two tell, is quite an extraordinary woman who smokes and drinks whiskey all day long. She does not care about the social norms and does not hesitate to express her own sexuality in public. On the other hand, she is an over-protective mother who encourages her children for being artists, etc. No one knows about Eliza’s origin, her family, even her surname. The narration goes back and forth in time. And while it goes back, we can observe Eliza’s problematic relationship between the other women in the family. While the children (Isobel and her brother, Charles) question their mother’s personality, Debbie, the second wife of their father Gordon says: “She wasn’t a saint, your mum, you know”. The urge to murder her on a symbolic level continues throughout the novel and it turns out to be a real issue when the father, Gordon murders her on a picnic. While deconstructing the whole text, the cliché but striking ending, when the narrator, Isobel wakes up in a hospital was kept in mind. In the end, we discover that the whole story is Isobel’s dreams throughout her coma. For this reason, all the metaphors, events, characters, relationships, etc. are analysed as the reflections of Isobel’s unconscious filled with societal norms in the light of Irigaray’s theories. We never get to know if all these event really occured or not.
Beginning with “the murder of the mother” issue, the wedding scene is quite important in comphrehending how Eliza was perceived by the society. During the wedding ceremony of Eliza and Gordon, the Widow comments upon the organization: “An expensive do [...] for a cheap you-know-what. Why have they married so quickly? Something fishy.” The gossip includes the connotation of Eliza’s probable pregnancy. Actually, she really is pregnant during the wedding. That is why the Widow calls Eliza “cheap”. The Widow complains about Gordon’s decision for not marrying a quiet, obedient girl. Moreover, after Charles the baby is born, the Widow underlines the fact that how “big” he is and says what would happen if he was not premature. She continues questioning whom Charles looks like. She clearly states that he does not look like neither Eliza nor Gordon at all. These suggestions throughout the novel imply how rejected Eliza is. While the Widow is portrayed as the protector of the social order, we remember Irigaray’s comments about the society’s Athenas in The Bodily Encounter with the Mother:
3 Luisa Muraro, “Female Genealogies,” Engaging with Irigaray (New York: Columbia University Press, 1994), 4.

As you might have gathered, all this is extremely contemporary. The mythology underlying patriarchy has not changed. What Oresteia describes for us still takes place. Here and there, regulation Athenas whose one begetter is the head of the Father King still burst forth. [...] they bury beneath their sanctuary women in struggle so that they will no longer disturb the new order of the home.4
Therefore, the Widow, Vinny, Debbie and many other female characters are portrayed as the modern Athenas. The portrayal of the women and their relationships in the novel point to Irigaray’s theories. For example, Irigaray claims that in Oresteia, and in the patriarchal order, the natural bond between mother and child is replaced with social impositions like marriage bond, legal process, naming, etc. The Widow’s gossiping about the child’s being an illegitimate one shows her point of view as the upholder of the system. Because, if the child is not Gordon’s, than Eliza is cheap, the son is a bastard. That is the rule of the society. And the same as Irigaray suggests, there are women, modern Athenas who are compliances of the patriarchal order, instead of the natural order.
However, the story takes place in 1960. Thus, the Widow was born and raised during the Victorian Era and under its long-lasting effects. Atkinson also underlines Irigaray’s claims about how contemporary this issue is, no matter which time period you grew up in. Moreover, this claim goes forth as Isobel tells another story parallel to the current one. The other story takes place in the 16th century, the characters are their ancestors. The murder still takes place, metaphorically and literally.
Moving towards Gordon’s murdering Eliza, it can be perceived as an unintentional, momentary act. However, it has many connotations between the lines. While making a picnic, during a tantrum, Gordon strangles Eliza and pushes her head against a tree. Afterwards, children (lost in the woods) find their mother’s dead body. During this, Isobel is 10; Charles is 12 years old. However, both of them do not remember (or rather, represses the memory) that their mother was murdered. Afterwards, Gordon finds the children and Vinny, takes them home. Few days later, Gordon also leaves the house during the night. When he comes back after 7 years, he finds out that the Widow told the children that he was dead. When Gordon asks why she did such a thing while knowing that he was alive, Vinnie says: “Mommy thought it was for the best.”5 Therefore, it is the Widow to sustain the order, to make the decisions. She is the order. And according to the order, the Widow should tell the children that their father is dead and their mother is eloped with her fancy man. She commits murder on a symbolic level, for the benefit of all or rather, for the benefit of social order. She is the Victorian Athena.
On the other hand, because the children does not remember (or prefer to do so) their finding Eliza’s dead body, and the other women tell them that she eloped with a man; they believe in the others’ statements, and they think that Gordon was dead. This twisted story also underlines Irigaray’s theory, it is actually the murder of the mother that takes place throughout the history, even though it is highly ignored, repressed throughout the history, as in the case of Eliza and Gordon.
As the narration goes on, the fragmented and unbalanced stories clash. Even the narrator (or narrators) contradict/s in the way of expressing the same events. Moreover, as Isobel’s personal comments
4 Luce Irigaray, “The Bodily Encounter with the Mother,” 37. 5 Kate Atkinson, Human Croquet, (Picador, 1997), 93.

like: “But she’s (Eliza) left behind not a single letter of the alphabet for us from which we can reconstruct her.”6 and “There is little chance that we can reconstitute our mother from such meagre remains.”7 we get to know that all the narration might be Isobel’s made-up stories for recreating a mother who is not subordinated, with whom she can identify. The assumption gets stronger through her waking up in a hospital. However, a mother who goes beyond the social norms but also portrayed as the perfect mother as an individual who is not subordinated to the patriarchal system is important. According to Irigaray, the daughters should at first recognize their mothers as “individuals” to become full persons and only then they can establish a real love between the two. However, Isobel has quite a few to portray a full mother figure and even though her stories made-up during the coma cannot help her to fully identify with her fictive mother figure. In her tales, no one wants to talk about Eliza, no one says anything about her to the children. Society disables them from recreating a mother figure, but even though as a imaginative person, Isobel succeeds to fill in a whole novel with her stories, the image of Eliza is still fragmented. The whole narration, the whole novel cannot replace a natural tie between the mother and the daughter. The symbolic order is not enough for that, as Irigaray suggests. But in the end, Isobel finds her photograph finally, and only after that point she continuously calls Eliza “mother”. Beforehand, she calls her with her name or even, as “the ghost”.
Nevertheless, as the murder and the reconstruction of the mother go hand in hand, it should be stated that Isobel is not a person who is totally free from the social impositions. She uses the same symbolic order, though she also stresses it, she utilizes the fairy-tales and fairy-tales are not stereotype- free materials. She is only sixteen and the novel starts at her birthday, in the morning. She dreams about her first kiss, but thinks that it is not going to happen because she is not feminine. She is big. And at some point, she blames Eliza for leaving her without teaching her how to be a great woman. This is again a reference to Irigaray.
I (Isobel) have no pattern for womanhood – other than provided by Vinny and Debbie and no-one coul call them good models. [...] she (Eliza) was never there to teach me. More important things – how to be a wife, how to be a mother. How to be a woman. If only I didn’t have to keep on inventing Eliza.8
(In the patriarchal society) The bond between mother and daughter, daughter and mother has to be broken for the daughter to become a woman. Female genealogy has to be suppressed, on behalf of the son-Father relationship and the idealization of the father and husband as patriarchs.9
Expectedly, Isobel yearns for her lost her mother to become a mother, a woman. The daughter at first identifies with the mother (the other) and then break the ties with her, heads towards the father. However, she lacks the first thep, because she does not have enough material to construct an image of mother. The narration claims that the tie between mother and daughter is also essential for the daughter to become an individual in this society. According to the natural order which is advocated by Irigaray, the tie
6 Ibid: 9.
7 Ibid: 157.
8 Ibid: 26.
9 Luce Irigaray, Sexes and Geneologies (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993), 108.

should never be broken. And for Isobel, the realization comes only when she manages to recognize Eliza as a full person, after seeing her photograpgh. Beforehand, she used to make up stories based on the personal items belonging to Eliza, found by Charles at home (like powder compact, handkerchief, suede shoe). Leaving alone breaking the tie with Eliza, she attaches with her even more deeply. Here, I would like to quote from Irigaray’s literary piece, The Sex Which is Not One, in which the natural mother daughter relationship is expressed deeply: “We are luminous. Neither one now two. I’ve never known how to count. Up to you. In their calculations, we make two. Really, two? Doesnt’t that make you laugh? An add sort of two.”10 However, Isobel’s approach to Eliza is never this innocent. It should be kept in mind that the whole narration in which Eliza is murdered on and on, belongs to her.
As stated before, the relationship between the women in the novel, including the Widow, Vinny, Debbie besides Eliza and Isobel rewrites Irigaray’s theories, as problematic mother and daughter relationship or modern Athenas as the compliances of the order. In Ethics of Sexual Difference, Irigaray claims that:
(In the patriarchal society) If we are to be desired and loved by men, we must abandon our mothers, substitute for them, eliminate them in order to be the same. All of which destroys the possibility of a love between mother and daughter. The two become at once accomplicesand rivals in order to move into the single possible position in the desire of man. This competition equally paralyzes love among sister-women. Because they strive to achieve the post of the unique one: the mother of mothers, one might say.11
It is to say that there is a hierarchical order between women, and of course a power struggle. The same issue prevails over the novel, Human Croquet. For example, when the family sets off for the picnic (during which Eliza is murdered) the Widow thinks: “Perhaps she’d (Eliza) come back with another baby. Or perhaps, with any luck, she’d get lost and not come back at all.”12. On their way back home, the children asks where their mother is, Vinny, knowing that she is murdered, says: “Don’t worry about her, [...] At least, I get to sit in front.”13 After the Widow passes away, the passage goes on as followed: “Vera handed in her notice as soon as the Widow died and went to live with her sister (Vinny). The idea of Vinny as the mistress of the house was too much for her. Charles moved into Vera’s room and Vinny into the Widow’s room (the best bedroom).”14 7 years after the murder, Gordon comes back home with a new wife, Debbie. By the time she steps in, she says: “I’m your new mummy.”15 And the time period after her arrival is named as “the Debbie’s regime”16 by the narrator. Therefore, the social hierarchy between women as claimed by Irigaray is found throughout the narration of Isobel. However, the same mentality is seen in
10 Luce Irigaray, The Sex Which is not One (New York: Cornell University Press, 1985), 207. 11 Irigaray, Ethics of Sexual Difference, 102.
12 Atkinson, Human Croquet, 52.
13 Ibid: 74.
14 Ibid: 82. 15 Ibid: 94. 16 Ibid: 100.

Isobel, too. When her friend tells her about Malcolm Lovat’s (Isobel’s platonic love) mother’s illnes, she is totally indifferent to the issue. On the other hand, she focuses on her new rival.
“’What’s he (Malcolm) doing here?’ I say, baffled. ‘Oh, his mother’s been taken ill, [...] Cancer or something.’ ‘What’s he doing with her(Malcolm’s new lover, Hilary)?’, ‘Apparently, they’re going out together.’ [...] ‘That’s it then, I am going to have to kill her.’”.17
At this point, the reason why Isobel reconstructs a mother figure which is ideal to her is obvious. Also, as a sixteen year old, she wants to discover the “secrets” of life with Malcolm Lovat. On the other hand, throughout her own made-up narration, we see that very strangely she attaches Malcolm with her mother, Eliza. Including Isobel, these three characters look quite alike (dark, curly hair and white skin) and the narration continuously centres on their heads, generally, choped off. She unconsciously remembers her mother’s dead body, but represses it. As she blames Eliza for her unsuccesful love affair with Malcolm, she kills both of them on and on. Considering that it is Isobel who creates these characters to identify herself with; as she sees that she cannot succeed to become “a real woman” her positive mirrors turn into negative ones and they are doomed to die. Kate Atkinson also underlines the fact that such an artifical tie between the daughter and a fictive mother cannot work. The natural attachment is crucial. The navel cannot be replaced. The “real” and the natural tie is vital and must not be broken.
Eliza’s murder scene is narrated a number of times throughout the novel; so is Malcolm’s death in a car crash. But the whole story also has implications of these two characters (Eliza and Malcolm) attached as Isobel’s positive (and then, negative) mirrors between the lines. Isobel may also be unconsciously wishing that these two people she yearns for but cannot reach (Eliza abandoned her, Malcolm is not in love with her), is probably off with their heads not to love her/be with her. This may be a way of unconsciously compensating by Isobel, for her own identity with which she is not satisfied at all. She continuously tries to turn her bad mirrors into acceptable good ones through killing them. As long as they are dead, their abandoning her is more reasonable. As long as they are “off with their heads”, her loneliness is acceptible.
‘She(Eliza) must have been off her head to leave two such bony children.’ Mrs Baxter opines gently.18
Somewhere, far away, a dog howls and something moves, the black shape of a figure walking across the field. I could swear it has no head.19
He (Gordon) stood at the door of the shop and raised his arms to play Oranges and Lemons and said “Off with her head!” [...] Gordon was just about to chop Eliza’s head as well.20
17 Ibid: 61. 18 Ibid: 9. 19 Ibid: 35. 20 Ibid: 52.

I awake from an unpleasant dream [...] I lowered the bucket into the well [...] I caught a head. [...] it was the head of Malcolm Lovat.21
Her (Eliza) face buried in the pillow (during sex).22
[...] burying her (Eliza) head in the crook of his (Gordon) arm. (111)
I carried him around with me in a small secret place inside of me (the heart, which was the same place I kept my mother. 23
Perhaps that’s the ordeal I have been set [...]by constantly killing him (Malcolm). Again and again.24
As Isobel kills not only Eliza but also Malcolm on and on, Malcolm always turns out to be alive while Eliza is always dead. Again, rather than the father or the male, the mother is actually being killed, murdered. The situation of attachment becomes more clear during the final pages of the novel, as she narrates a Christmas dinner. A shadow she believes to be her mother presents Malcolm as her new boy friend: “It’s for you, darling, it’s your boyfriend. [...] Here’s Malcolm.”25 The point in which all the situation gets even more complicated is where the narration reveals that Malcolm is Eliza’s illegitimate son, thus, Isobel’s half-brother. Actually, in the story, Isobel never gets to know it. At this point, we should remember that Isobel is an all-knowing narrator. In the first pages, she says: “I am Isobel Fairfax, I am the alpha and omega of narrators (I am omniscient) and I know the beginning and the end. [...] And in between are all the stories. This is one of mine.”26 She knows it all beforehand, or rather, creates the whole narration. The reader never knows what is “real” and what is “fiction”. While the whole narration is Isobel’s stories, it is again her unconscious, trying to normalize Malcolm’s indifference to her. Because, they are half sister and brother now. Malcolm suddenly turns into a good mirror again.
Going back to Irigaray, there is one more direct reference to her theories made by Kate Atkinson, quite suspiciously. Human Croquet was written in 1997, and during the time Alan Sokal and Jean Bricmont published their book critique Fashionable Nonsense in which they harshly criticized Irigaray’s claims about E=mc2 and the whole event became a great issue. Irigaray claimed that E=mc2 was a sexed equation priviledging the speed of light over other speeds that are also vital to the humankind. In the novel Human Croquet, while Isobel is at a lecture, her teacher talks about the ancestral life, the blue-green algae which was the first to discover how to turn molecules of “light” into food, indirectly energy etc. Kate Atkinson through Isobel, narrates the scientific information as a story and manifests how light is in corelation with other materials of Nature/how light actually needs to be revealed, utilized by the blue- green algae. Then, the teacher writes the formule of the speed of light and light energy on the blackboard.
21 Ibid: 22. 22 Ibid: 110. 23 Ibid: 165. 24 Ibid: 138. 25 Ibid: 136. 26 Ibid: 5.

The dullness of the formule after a fairy tale-like ancestral story is underlined. Atkinson highlights the bilateral relationship between all parts of Nature and unjustness of priviledging the one solely.27
As a result, Luce Irigaray’s theories are heavily influential upon Kate Atkinson’s novel, Human Croquet. Irigaray’s claim “The society is based on the murder of the mother” is utilized and Modern Athenas are seen throughout the novel. Murdering Eliza is not committed by Gordon only. It is a mutual crime. Aunt Vinny, the Widow, Debbie know that Gordon murdered her. The whole story with many connotations of murdering her even while Eliza is alive is by Isobel. For example, when they go to seaside, the children bury her in sand. Moreover, all the characters keep on killing her on a symbolic level with words or not talking about her at all. While they got rid of her belongings, the whole neighbeourhood watches the event with curiosity. It is a mutual act, this is a societal issue which is by all means contemporary. On the other hand, Irigaray’s another theory about mother and daughter relationships reshaped by the patriarchal order is also found between the lines. Isobel is a problematic child who lacks self-confidence and continuously blames her mother, Eliza for leaving her without teaching her how to be a women. According to Irigaray, daughter and mother should be “one”. The natural bond between the two cannot be replaced by societal inventions or anything produced in this patriarchal symbolic order, including Isobel’s full-lenght novel stories. Isobel feels the need of acknowledging Eliza as a full person, thus she tries to create a very wellrounded character through her stories, though quite fragmented. At some point she clearly questions if “real” Eliza was like that or not. She needs the image of a mother who is not subordinated to identify with, but it cannot work since it is created with the stereotypical Language and is based on Eliza’s three personal belongings only. Hundreds of pages of stories are not enough to replace the natural bond in this case, as Irigaray suggests. The full comphrehension comes only when she finds her photograph and sees Eliza as a full person. This makes us remember Irigaray’s theory, saying that the daughter must at first acknowledge her mother as an individual. In an epiphany moment she cries and sees her mother as a full person. Only after then she calls her “mother” only and becomes a mother herself. This is why Irigaray’s theories about mothers and daughters are vital, in which no societal production can replace the natural bond, the navel is expressed.
27 Ibid: 58.

BIBLIOGRAPHY
Atkinson, Kate. Human Croquet. Picador, 1997.
Engaging with Irigaray. Ed. Burke, Carolyn, Naomi Schor, Margaret Whitford. New York:
Columbia University Press, 1994.
Irigaray, Luce. Ethics of Sexual Difference. New York: Cornell University Press, 1993
Irigaray, Luce. Sexes and Geneologies. New York: Columbia University Press, 1993. Irigaray, Luce. The Sex Which is not One. New York: Cornell University Press, 1985.
Rich, Adrienne. Of Woman Born: Motherhood as Experience and Institution. New York: Norton, 1976.
Irigaray, Luce. “The Bodily Encounter with the Mother”.
Muraro, Luisa. “Female Genealogies”. Engaging with Irigaray. New York: Columbia University Press, 1994.