ORCID

https://orcid.org/0009-0006-8789-8264

Date of Award

2025

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

English (Ph.D.)

Department

English

First Advisor

Amy King

Second Advisor

Kathleen Lubey

Third Advisor

Jennifer Travis

Abstract

Examining depictions of motherhood in literature has long been a preoccupation of literary criticism. Pregnancy, while usually mentioned alongside or in conjunction with motherhood has not nearly been explored in the same way. Textual representations all depict the mother as a permanent state of being, whereas pregnancy is a temporary state - for a body may become pregnant but it is only for a finite period. Focusing on this vital difference of permanent status versus a body in flux, this dissertation charts the narrative repercussions in the novel of the representation of the pregnant and conceiving body. As we shall see, this leads to different kinds of plots and narratives, with varying impacts on the modern literary tradition. Focusing on the period between the 1780s and the early 1960s—or the period between the first wave of feminism and the cusp of the second wave—this dissertation will argue that the pregnant and conceiving body is very much present in novels of the eighteenth through twentieth centuries, even though it is often relegated to the periphery. In unpacking what I see as a sometimes purposely hidden and sometimes aggressively subjugated presentation of the pregnant and conceiving body, this research will show how this curated suppression is mirrored in the viewpoints toward this body in both society as well as through medical history. This research will also discuss the changing views of the female reproductive system, the medicalization of pregnancy and childbirth, and the resulting change in the rhetoric of pregnancy. It will achieve this through assessing the changing presentation of the maternal body as defined by medical, legal, political, and cultural discourse. It will look at social and political histories which help to show how the changing representations of pregnancy in history and cultural history are reflected in the literature indicative of that time period. This dissertation seeks to pull the veil back from long-silenced experiences written off as “women’s issues,” and explore why and how authors were writing the pregnant and conceiving body and what it reveals to the contemporary reader about society, culture, medical history, and of ourselves.

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