AS ADALGISA GIORGIO REMARKS in her introduction to Writing Mothers and Daughters, "the mother-daughter dyad is still the dominant structuring principle of female identity in Western cultures."1 Prominent feminist theorists such as Nancy Chodorow and Adrienne Rich have illustrated in great detail the impact of this unique female-to-female relationship on the daughter's psychological and sexual development and, moreover, her own relationship to motherhood.2 It is generally agreed, however, that far from being an unproblematic cathexis, the mother-daughter bond is wrenchingly complex, so much so that Phyllis Chesler has labeled it "woman's stormiest love affair."3 In the field of literary studies, proponents of écriture féminine such as Luce Irigaray and Hélène Cixous view maternal symbiosis as a core feature of the daughter's text.4 Indeed, so pervasive is the presence of the mother in the daughter's narrative that Marianne Hirsch has identified a distinct genre of matrilineal literature, namely "the mother-daughter plot,"5 in which the daughter, via writing, is always thinking back through the mother in some respect. Lori Saint-Martin develops this concept further, arguing that the relationship between mother and daughter must be viewed as a powerful dynamic "qui se trouve à la source même de l'écriture au féminin et qui surdétermine les structures narratives et même, dans une certaine mesure, le langage."6 For scholars of matrilineal literature, the daughter's text emerges as an important space for maternal reconciliation in the aftermath of a rupture from the mother.