Author : Marilyn Yalom
Publisher : University Park ; London : Pennsylvania State University Press
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 152 pages
Book Rating : 4.:/5 (321 download)
Book Synopsis Maternity, Mortality, and the Literature of Madness by : Marilyn Yalom
Download or read book Maternity, Mortality, and the Literature of Madness written by Marilyn Yalom and published by University Park ; London : Pennsylvania State University Press. This book was released on 1985 with total page 152 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book explores the interrelationship between the option and experience of motherhood and the experience of mental breakdown as vividly communicated by 20th-century women writers. The focus is on three writers--Sylvia Plath, Marie Cardinal, and Margaret Atwood--but others are included, such as Maxine Hong Kingston, Anne Sexton, Virginia Woolf, and Emma Santos. Maternity, Mortality, and the Literature of Madness calls attention to the ways in which maternity and motherhood represent common forms of apprehension for all women, reactivating the fear of death that has been discovered and repressed in childhood, and, in some instances, contributing directly to mental breakdown. It offers evidence of the particular stresses encountered by highly gifted women who try to negotiate their way between creation and procreation and "write their way out" of madness.