Love, Maternity, and Feminism: Exploring Alternative Relationships in the Works of Ah!Nana Artists Chaland, Claveloux, and Capuana.

This article examines three comics strips published by the feminist French underground magazine Ah!Nana (1976–1978) in which the artists Nicole Claveloux, Yves Chaland, and Cecilia Capuana lampoon marriage and child-rearing. I contend that their criticisms are based on the feminist works of Simone de Beauvoir and Luce Irigaray, as well as on the anti-family stance of the May '68 movement, on American underground feminisms, and on post-war anti-Americanisation movements. Even though Claveloux's, Chaland's, and Capuana's comics were conceived independently of each other, they can be read in a climatic sequence in which the critique of marriage and gender roles metamorphoses into the creation of an independent female protagonist who not only questions the status quo but also embodies a new understanding of gender and kinship. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]