Taking six key writers of the inter-war period, this original study looks at the way they explore the mother-daughter relationship, finding in it a key to their identity as women and asartists. Providing in-depth critical analyses of Virginia Woolf, Dorothy Richardson, Ivy Compton-Burnett, Elizabeth Bowen, Rose Macaulay and Jean Rhys, this study for the first time enables you to draw parallels between their work and that of female psychoanalysts Helene Deutsch, Melanie Klein and Karen Horney during the inter-war period. It combines theoretical and textual criticism within a specific historical context in an especially useful way. The book concludes that these writers look to the mother to empower them and challenges the view of the mother as a regressive influence.