Her Mother's Daughter is consistent with feminist literary prescriptions in disdaining a tightly plotted structure which builds to a narrative climax.

Instead it uses a more organic pattern which follows the ebb and flow of events in the main characters' lives.

A more distinctive device is the use of a dual sequence to organize the narrative. Episodes in Belle's life alternate with events experienced by her daughter Anastasia at a corresponding stage of her life. Anastasia tells her own story in the first-person, while Belle's story is told from the more distant third-person point of view. This dual structure promotes the comparison of Anastasia's and her mother's respective childhood experiences.

Courtships, young-married financial problems, and other common experiences of life are similarly treated. This device accentuates the universals of female experience without reducing them to a repetitious biological determinism. French also uses a minor circular motif, with certain...