Les Rapports Mere-Fille Dans De L’autre Cote Du Regard De Ken Bugul Et Le Roman De Pauline De Calixthe Beyala

Abstract

In this work, we explore how mother-daughter relationships are portrayed in Ken Bugul’s De l’autre côté du regard (2003) and Calixthe Bayala’s Le roman de Pauline (2009). It was our aim to determine whether these relationships are always characterized by conflict, and if so, to determine which factors led to the conflict. We also wanted to find out if the works were inspired by the authors’ personal lives and to determine if the relationships of mothers with their daughters were influenced by the kind of relationship which existed between the mothers and their mothers. We used the psychocriticism and the feminist literary criticism approaches to develop our ideas by comparative study and analysis. We identified that this relationship is often marked by conflict and that the fear of becoming like one’s mother, the mother seeing her daughter as another version of herself, and competition between mothers and daughters were the main causes of the conflict. We also discovered that De l’autre côté du regard was very much influenced by the personal life of its author Ken Bugul while Le roman de Pauline was not. Also, we found out that in some cases, mother daughter relationships were influenced by the kind of relationships the mothers in the novel had with their own mothers. University of Ghana http://ugspace.ug.edu.gh