Date of Award
Fall 2023
Document Type
Open Access Dissertation
Department
English Language and Literatures
First Advisor
Anthony Jarells, Major Professor
Abstract
Eric Plemons writes in *The Look of A Woman* that “biological stories do more than describe biologies” (54). This dissertation explores what breast cancer stories do and how society creates meaning around the experience of breast cancer. I argue that, in the long nineteenth century in Britain, breast cancer was part of a two-sided medical/moral paradigm where medical diagnosis became enmeshed with morality. Health, then, became a result of proper domestic behavior, disease a result of straying from societal norms. Following the introductory chapter, chapter two traces the development of this paradigm as an outgrowth of the emergence of middle-class ideals and medical fields. The two converge around the image of the breast-feeding mother, who becomes a symbol of a healthy body and a healthy nation. Chapter three begins by exploring how this medical/moral paradigm circulated in medical treatises, which posited that medical diagnosis was connected to moral failings. This chapter also introduces patient narratives as a site of disruption, a place where women could resist the developing medical/moral hegemony. Chapter four returns to fiction, arguing that medical treatises and fiction function co-constitutively in order to broadcast this narrative across society. In totality, these chapters reveal what Ruth Perry has called the “colonization of the breast.” That is, the transformation of the breast from a physical attribute to a symbolic metonym, with a healthy breast representing a healthy physical body, a healthy domestic realm, and a healthy social order. As a whole, this dissertation demonstrates the ways in which late-eighteenth and early-nineteenth-century British writing represented breast cancer, revealing how that society navigated gendered health norms: responsibilizing women for not only their own health but the health of the nation. In chapter five, I conclude by asserting that this past has not passed and, rather, that it has sentimentalized our own, modern understanding of gender and health, broadly, and women and breast cancer, specifically. If we want to tell better stories, we need to start by understanding the origins of the ones we currently tell ourselves.
Rights
© 2024, Leslie Rene Pearson
Recommended Citation
Pearson, L. R.(2023). Revolting Motherhood: [De]Generative Breast Stories Transmuting Medical/Moral Paradigms in Britain During the Long Nineteenth Century. (Doctoral dissertation). Retrieved from https://scholarcommons.sc.edu/etd/7574