Auxiliadora Perez Vides 2003: Solo ellas: familia y feminismo en la novela irlandesa contemporanea.(Book Review)

Publication: Atlantis, revista de la Asociación Espanola de Estudios Anglo-Norteamericanos

Publication Date: 01-DEC-04

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COPYRIGHT 2004 Spanish Association for Anglo-American Studies (AEDEAN)

Auxiliadora Pérez Vides 2003: Sólo ellas: familia y feminismo en la novela irlandesa contemporánea. Huelva: Servicio de Publicaciones de la Universidad de Huelva. 144 pp.

In her fascinating study, Sólo ellas: familia y feminismo en la novela irlandesa contemporánea, Auxiliadora Pérez Vides views the institution of the family in Ireland and, in particular, the non-conventional family arrangements, from an interdisciplinary perspective that combines feminist issues, literary criticism and sociology. Rather than attesting the fundamental importance of relationships between the different members of the family, this book attempts to access the figure of the lone mother in contemporary Ireland, and the possible alternatives available to her, as well as examining mothering as a gendered activity and ideology, and its portrayal in fiction. In doing so, this book follows a recent trend in feminist criticism--that of using psychoanalysis and/or philosophy--to explore the long-forgotten subjectivity of the mother. Sara Ruddick's Maternal Thinking: Towards a Politics of Peace (1980) pioneered this shift in balance from the daughter to the mother. Since then, many studies have clearly established firm grounds on this subject, thus providing the necessary theoretical tools for a literary analysis of the figure of the mother. One such book is Narrating Mothers: Theorizing Maternal Subjectivities (1991), edited by Brenda O. Daly and Maureen T. Reddy, which focused on the consideration of the maternal voice and perspective in contemporary narratives and, in particular, the "notion of the double position and the double-voiced discourse of maternal subjectivity" (Daly and Reddy 5). More recently, Las mujeres y los niños primero: discursos de la maternidad, edited by Ángeles de la Concha and Raquel Osborne and published in 2004, insists upon the need to revise the maternal role in Western and non-Western societies. In their thorough introduction the editors state that "nos parecía urgente una reflexión sobre el tratamiento que recibe la función materna y los modelos que se ofrecen a las mujeres desde discursos culturales diversos" (2004: 8). Similarly, Auxiliadora Pérez Vides' Sólo ellas examines the subjectivity of the mother, or more specifically, that of the lone mother in contemporary Ireland. This volume proves to be very timely since family arrangements are increasingly changing all across Europe, and few studies have tackled this subject using an interdisciplinary approach as yet. In her short, but clear, introduction, the author establishes the main basis upon which her argument is constructed. Not only does she incorporate different fields of study--feminism, sociology and postmodernism--but she also maintains that it is absolutely crucial to remember the postcolonial condition of Ireland that accounts for the country's backward state and for the objectification and "maternalisation" of the figure of the Irish woman, defined only in terms of...

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