This dissertation examines the patriarchal construction of motherhood; in particular, the mother/daughter relationship within this configuration in four novels by Hispanic women writers: Laura Esquivel's Como agua para chocolate (1989), Elena Castedo's Paraiso (1990), Cristina Garcia's Sonar en cubano (1992) and Silvia Molloy's En breve carcel (1981). These works are examined from predominately feminist and psychoanalytic feminist critical perspectives, with an additional incorporation of clinical psychoanalysis. Included, secondarily, in this study is an analysis of both general and country-specific social, historical and/or cultural components of Latin America that have contributed to the oppression of women in these particular societies and time frames Borrowing from Nancy Chodorow's theories on object-relational psychology, particularly the pre-oedipal relation to the mother, and feminism's acknowledgement of the institution of motherhood as the cornerstone of patriarchy, psychoanalytic feminism seeks to locate the source of women's oppression in the internal dynamics of the nuclear (patriarchal) family construction. That is, whereas feminism alone explains women's oppression in the social, cultural and political sphere (particularly in the sexual division of labor), psychoanalytic feminism seeks an explanation for gender/sexual identity and attitudes regarding these in the primary familial dynamic, in reaction to the omnipotent mother and internal mother image, which has sponsored a defensive attitude in men and generated the idea of masculine superiority. Women are socialized to be empathizers and nurturers, sublimating their own needs for emotional fulfillment in the process. Unable to self-nurture, they pass this sense of emotional deprivation on to their daughters. Unlike sons, who are able to return to the lost primary erotic relationship with the mother in their heterosexual relationships, women are not; instead, they remain largely unindividuated and emotionally bereft. In addition, alliances between women are undermined in patriarchy, which pathologizes bonding between them. It is concluded, then, that women's oppression in the larger (social and cultural) arena in Latin America has its origin in the primary arena; that is, in the nuclear family constitution, in the institution of mothering, and in the concomitant cycle of failed nurturance between women in patriarchy