Semester

Spring

Date of Graduation

2024

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Type

PhD

College

Eberly College of Arts and Sciences

Department

English

Committee Chair

Kathleen Ryan

Committee Member

Gwen Bergner

Committee Member

Marilyn Francus

Committee Member

Karen Cardozo

Abstract

Abstract

A Legacy of Labor: Maternity Narratives in 1960s and 1970s North American Life Writing

Katelynn Ann Vogelpohl

The phenomenon of maternity has been repeatedly described as an event that shakes the very foundations of social and physical identity. As the flesh of the pregnant person literally divides to produce new life, one subject becomes enclosed within another, dramatically affecting the pregnant person’s sense of self and causing a confluence of intense, and often conflicting, feelings. In North America, there are two dominant, and seemingly opposing, discourses on pregnancy and childbirth: the institutional medical discourse and the natural childbirth discourse. These two discourses have perpetuated the myth of a homogenous, monolithic maternity experience and generally ignore the myriad of intersectional diversities that affect maternity and mothering. This dissertation explores North American maternity life writing from the 1960s and 1970s—a time period heavily influenced by the second women’s movement, Black Power movement, women’s health movement, and natural childbirth movement. These narratives destabilize the concepts of a universal maternity or mothering experience and create discursive room to address the cultural taboos that permeate the realities of pregnancy and birth.

In Chapter 1, I explore how the dominant discourses of the mid-twentieth century create and utilize metaphorical language to describe the physical processes and sensations of pregnancy and childbirth. This chapter introduces the public language and ideologies associated with maternity in the 1960s and 1970s that the authors in my subsequent chapters negotiate. In Chapter 2, I discuss three pieces that center splitting or multiplying maternal subjectivities and feelings of maternal ambivalence: Margaret Atwood’s “Giving Birth,” Doris Betts’s “Still Life with Fruit,” and Maxine Chernoff’s “A Birth.” In this chapter, I purposefully focus on writing from white, married, heterosexual, middle-class, cisgender female authors to explore the diversity of maternity experiences within a relatively homogenized and culturally idealized group. In Chapter 3, I turn to Black revolutionary Assata Shakur’s memoir, Assata, to discuss the tenets of Black maternal theory and mythology that view Black motherhood as a source of strength, resistance, and cultural revolution. Finally, in Chapter 4, I extend the understanding of maternity life writing to include stories of reproductive loss and abortion. Looking to Sylvia Plath’s “Three Women: A Poem for Three Voices” and Ntozake Shange’s for colored girls who have considered suicide / when the rainbow is enuf, I discuss the value of polyphony as a writing technique to further foreground the complexities and diversities of maternity experiences. This chapter highlights an overarching theme of the dissertation: the value of storytelling as a source of connection for individuals whose experiences have been essentially erased from public discourse.

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