Literary Anatomies: Women's Bodies and Health in Literature

Delese Wear · Lois LaCivita Nixon

Jul 1994 · State University of New York Press

About this ebook

This book shows how imaginative literature brings women's medical experiences back to lived moments in living bodies, where readers can, perhaps, better understand what it feels like to be someone else. The authors provide four sections that discuss birth, abortion, miscarriage, and fertility; breast cancer; middle age, menopause, and hysterectomy; and aging. While the focus is on twentieth-century North American women, a particular emphasis is placed on the diversity of women's experiences within that time and culture.

About the author

Delese Wear is Associate Professor of Behavioral Sciences, Coordinator of Human Values in Medicine, and Associate Director of Women and Medicine at Northeastern Ohio Universities College of Medicine. She is the author of The Center of the Web: Women and Solitude, also published by SUNY Press. Lois LaCivita Nixon is Associate Professor of Medicine in the Division of Medical Ethics and Humanities at the University of South Florida College of Medicine.