
Voicing Voluntary Childlessness
Narratives of Non-Mothering in French
Natalie Edwards(Author)
Peter Lang Verlag
Published on 21. December 2015
Book
Paperback/Softback
214 pages
978-3-0343-1809-9 (ISBN)
Description
The decision to reject motherhood is the subject of several key works of literature in French since the new millennium. This book looks at first-person accounts of voluntary childlessness by women writing in French. The book explores how women narrate their decision not to mother, the issues that they face in doing so and the narrative techniques that they employ to justify their stories. It asks how these authors challenge stereotypes of the childless woman by claiming their own identity in narrative, publicly proclaiming their right to choose and writing a femininity that is not connected to motherhood.
Using feminist, sociological and psychoanalytic theories to interrogate non-mothering, this work is the first book-length study of narratives that counter this long-standing taboo. It brings together authors who stake out a new terrain, creating a textual space in which to take ownership of their childlessness and call for new understandings of female identity beyond maternity.
Reviews / Votes
"Voicing Voluntary Childlessness est d'une indeniable importance pour l'etude de la litterature contemporaine des femmes en ce qu'il s'attache aux alternatives a une identite feminine normative et touche a un sujet encore tabou qu'est le refus ou le non-desir d'etre mere." (Evelyne Ledoux-Beaugrand, Romanische Forschungen 129 / 2017)More details
Series
Edition
New edition
Language
English
Place of publication
Oxford
United Kingdom
Publishing group
Peter Lang Group AG, International Academic Publishers
Edition type
New edition
Dimensions
Height: 21 cm
Width: 14.8 cm
Weight
320 gr
ISBN-13
978-3-0343-1809-9 (9783034318099)
DOI
10.3726/978-3-0353-0795-5
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions

Book
12/2015
Studies in Contemporary Women's Writing
€61.88
Article exhausted; check different version

E-Book
12/2015
Peter Lang Verlag
€70.49
Available for download
Person
Natalie Edwards is Senior Lecturer in French Studies and a member of the Fay Gale Centre for Research on Gender at the University of Adelaide, Australia. She holds a PhD from Northwestern University and specializes in contemporary French and Francophone literature, autobiography, gender studies and visual culture. She is the author of Shifting Subjects: Plural Subjectivity in Contemporary Francophone Women's Autobiography (2011) and co-editor most recently of Framing French Culture: Photography and the Visual Arts (2015).
Content
Contents: Perspectives on Voluntary Childlessness - Theorising Voluntary Childlessness - Psychoanalysing Voluntary Childlessness - Expressions of Voluntary Childlessness - Linda Le's Epistolary Innovation: A l'enfant que je n'aurai pas - Jane Sautiere's Autofictional Explorations: Nullipare - The Struggle of Personal Criticism: Lucie Joubert's L'Envers du landau - The Ageing Voluntarily Childless Woman: Madeleine Chapsal's La Femme sans.