Kate Chopin's The Awakening (1899) is a novel that illuminates the heroines struggle to establish an identity separate from that of her father, husband, and son. Choice, free will, and suicide are important issues in this text.

Tillie Olson's short story, "I Stand Here Ironing" (1961) is concerned with the relationship between a mother and daughter. Olson relates events common to all women and explores how those events can serve to trap mothers and daughters in a relationship not of their making.

Beth Henley's Crimes of the Heart (1982) depicts a mother and three daughters who struggle to create an identity that is not defined by their mother's suicide. Henley's play examines the other side of suicide that of the child who must contend with guilt and unresolved questions when a parent chooses to kill herself.

"To Room Nineteen," Doris Lessmg's 1963 short story...