Bourgeois Mothers, Bourgeois Daughters: a bitterly ironic portrait of two generations of women. Elisabeth, 58, is trying to age with dignity. Her respectable life is best characterized by what she has not done: she did not attend university and did not work, she did not neglect her children and did not cheat on her husband with the artist Jakob, she did not stand up to her mother-in-law and still does not claim a right to be listed in the land registry of the Art Nouveau villa. With cynicism and restrained self-reflection, she observes the aging of the women around her. She also watches her children, especially Franziska, 35, who tends to have outbursts of anger, struggles with society's expectations of her role as a mother, and cannot realize the theoretical equality of men and women in everyday life. She too has not fulfilled her visions.