'What's a D and C between friends?' Space, intimacy and the medicalisation of unmotherhood in modernist literature.
Med Humanit
; 50(2): 266-275, 2024 Aug 14.
Article
em En
| MEDLINE
| ID: mdl-38802247
ABSTRACT
This essay theorises what 'unmotherhood'-or, living outside of motherhood-means within the specific context of 'the modern'. Unmotherhood is an actively constructed state; it is explored through the parameters of agentive choice, social pressure and state control; and at the turn-of-the-20th-century novels articulate this state through specific vocabularies of contemporaneous phenomena of modernity. I look to four novels representative of four forms of unmotherhood Tess Slesinger's The Unpossessed depicts a somewhat voluntary abortion; H.D.'s Asphodel (and its sister novel Bid Me to Live) are fictional representations of the author's own stillbirth; Jean Rhys's Good Morning, Midnight depicts a woman's life in the wake of her newborn son's death and Nella Larsen's Quicksand is a narrative dependent on the protagonist's refusal to marry because of her equation of marriage with conception. Reading these narratives together affords us the opportunity to consider what 'unmotherhood' means as a constructed state in and of itself, beyond the presumed negative, passive state of the 'not' or the 'not yet'. Through this analysis, I define 'unmotherhood' as (1) a state mediated through medical knowledge, objects, spaces and authority figures; (2) an experience narrated through vocabularies pulled from phenomena closely associated with 20th-century modernity and (3) a role dynamically shaped through compulsory heterosexuality embedded in familial relationships. In these three ways, my analysis of the selected novels defines unmotherhood as a permanent, transient, chosen, enforced and-contradictory as it all may be-a legible and definable experience.
Palavras-chave
Texto completo:
1
Coleções:
01-internacional
Base de dados:
MEDLINE
Assunto principal:
Literatura Moderna
Limite:
Female
/
Humans
/
Male
/
Pregnancy
Idioma:
En
Revista:
Med Humanit
Assunto da revista:
ETICA
Ano de publicação:
2024
Tipo de documento:
Article
País de afiliação:
Estados Unidos
País de publicação:
Estados Unidos