Degree Name

BA

Department

Comparative Arts and Letters

College

Humanities

Defense Date

2025-03-06

Publication Date

2025-03-14

First Faculty Advisor

Dr. Sara Phenix

First Faculty Reader

Dr. Patrícia Andrade

Honors Coordinator

Dr. Larry Peer

Keywords

Maternity, Pregnancy, Feminism, France, America, Brazil

Abstract

This thesis explores portrayals of the pregnant female mind in early 20th-century literature completed by female authors in the francophone, lusophone, and anglophone tradition. The three cited authors—Lucie Delarue-Mardrus, Pagu, and Nella Larsen—have each produced novels which include explicit references to childbirth and maternity, as well as veiled references to the mother’s mental state before, during, and after pregnancy. A close analysis of these scenes reveals an underlying discourse of the effects of pregnancy on cognition and mental health, suggesting that the contemporary discourse on the self-sacrificing mother was over-simplistic and placed women within strict categories of “good mother” or “bad mother” depending on their reactions to pregnancy and their newborn child. In this thesis, I rely on the historical context of the shift towards hospitals for childbirth as well as the emerging feminist movement in order to show how these authors used their literature to advocate for a more complex embodied pregnant woman whose identity extended beyond the reach of her pregnancy.

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