Research Catalog

Title

Abortion, choice, and contemporary fiction : the armageddon of the maternal instinct / Judith Wilt.

Author

Wilt, Judith, 1941-

Publication

• Chicago : University of Chicago Press, ©1990.
• ©1990.

Items in the Library & Off-site

Details

Description

xiii, 183 pages; 23 cm

Summary

Publisher description: In recent years, public debate has raged over the issue of maternal choice. While personal testimony and political argument have received widespread attention, artistic representations of birth and abortion have been submerged. Judith Wilt offers the first look at how contemporary writers tell and retell the stories that shape our perceptions about abortion. She reveals that the struggle to plot these painful, complex narratives of choice, control, guilt, loss, and liberation has preoccupied an astonishing number of our most distinguished novelists, male and female alike. Readers of twentieth-century novels are more likely to encounter plots centered on maternal choice than those dealing with the more traditional problems of courtship and marriage. In the opening of the book, Wilt discusses real case histories of several women. After studying the ambiguities of their decisions, she turns to their counterpoints depicted in contemporary fiction. Working from a feminist perspective, Wilt traces the theme of maternal choice in works by Margaret Atwood, Margaret Drabble, Joan Didion, Mary Gordon, Alice Walker, Toni Morrison, Gloria Naylor, Marge Piercy, Thomas Keneally, Graham Swift, Ernest Hemingway, William Faulkner, John Barth, John Irving, and others. Behind the political, medical, and moral debates on abortion, Wilt argues, is a profound psychocultural shock at the recognition that maternity is passing from the domain of instinct to that of conscious choice. Although never wholly instinctual, maternity's potential capture by consciousness raises complex questions. The novels Wilt discusses portray worlds in which principles are endangered by sexual inequality, male power and hidden male fear of abandonment, impotence, female submission, and covert rage, and, in the case of black maternity, the hideous aftermath of slavery.

Subject

• Irving, John, 1942- > Criticism and interpretation
• Barth, John > Criticism and interpretation
• Walker, Alice, 1944- > Criticism and interpretation
• Morrison, Toni > Criticism and interpretation
• Hansberry, Lorraine, 1930-1965 > Criticism and interpretation
• Atwood, Margaret, 1939- > Criticism and interpretation
• Didion, Joan > Criticism and interpretation
• Atwood, Margaret, 1939-
• Barth, John
• Didion, Joan
• Hansberry, Lorraine, 1930-1965
• Irving, John, 1942-
• Morrison, Toni
• Walker, Alice, 1944-
• 1900-1999
• American fiction > 20th century > History and criticism
• Women and literature > English-speaking countries
• Abortion in literature
• Birth control in literature
• Motherhood in literature
• Mother and child in literature
• Mothers in literature
• Women in literature
• English fiction > 20th century > History and criticism
• Literatura norteamericana > S.XX > Historia y crítica
• Mujeres > En la literatura
• Novela inglesa > S.XX > Historia y crítica
• Abortion in literature
• American fiction
• Birth control in literature
• English fiction
• Mother and child in literature
• Motherhood in literature
• Mothers in literature
• Women and literature
• Women in literature
• English-speaking countries

Genre/Form

Criticism, interpretation, etc.

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references (p. 167-179) and index.

Contents

Introduction: The wreck, and the story of the wreck -- Paradigms for the plot of maternal choice: Novels by John Barth and Margaret Drabble -- "We are not dying": Abortion and recovery in four novels by women -- Abortion and the fears of the fathers: Five male writers -- Black maternity: "A Need for someone to want the black baby to live."

ISBN

• 0226901580
• 9780226901589

LCCN

89020595

OCLC

• ocm20799166
• 20799166
• SCSB-1894192

Owning Institutions

Princeton University Library