Women's Autobiographies, Culture, Feminism

Does pregnancy render a woman "a body among minds?" Linking feminist, psychoanalytic, and cultural theory in confronting such questions in how mothers have been represented by themselves and their daughters, Siegel (English, Mount Mary College, Wisconsin) analyzes how metaphors of motherhood affect feminism and even how the "reborn" body is viewed in organ transplantation. Perspectives examined range from the rejection of motherhood in Simone de Beauvoir's Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter to "the housebroken, domesticated gothics" of Erma Bombeck.