Mother-daughter relationships in La casa de los espíritus and The Joy Luck Club : an attempt to subvert patriarchal society in the quest for identity

Abstract

My thesis focuses on the female characters in Amy Tan's The Joy Luck Club and Isabel Allende's La casa de los espíritus. The analysis centers on their relationships as mother and daughters, as well as their status as women living in or having lived in patriarchal societies and the transferring of experiences between generations. They employ different ways of subverting the patriarchy; Allende's women dominate the narrative and take control of their lives away from the powerful male in the family, while only the older generation of Tan's women have lived under a patriarchal society and therefore attempt to eliminate patriarchal power by raising their daughters in a free society, with mixed results.