{"status":"ok","message-type":"work","message-version":"1.0.0","message":{"indexed":{"date-parts":[[2025,9,24]],"date-time":"2025-09-24T19:40:17Z","timestamp":1758742817249,"version":"3.44.0"},"reference-count":49,"publisher":"BMJ","issue":"2","content-domain":{"domain":["bmj.com"],"crossmark-restriction":true},"short-container-title":["Med Humanities"],"accepted":{"date-parts":[[2024,4,24]]},"published-print":{"date-parts":[[2024,6]]},"abstract":"<jats:p>This essay theorises what \u2018unmotherhood\u2019\u2014or, living outside of motherhood\u2014means within the specific context of \u2018the modern\u2019. Unmotherhood is an actively constructed state; it is explored through the parameters of agentive choice, social pressure and state control; and at the turn-of-the-20th-century novels articulate this state through specific vocabularies of contemporaneous phenomena of modernity. I look to four novels representative of four forms of unmotherhood: Tess Slesinger\u2019s <jats:italic>The Unpossessed<\/jats:italic> depicts a somewhat voluntary abortion; H.D.\u2019s <jats:italic>Asphodel<\/jats:italic> (and its sister novel <jats:italic>Bid Me to Live<\/jats:italic>) are fictional representations of the author\u2019s own stillbirth; Jean Rhys\u2019s <jats:italic>Good Morning, Midnight<\/jats:italic> depicts a woman\u2019s life in the wake of her newborn son\u2019s death and Nella Larsen\u2019s <jats:italic>Quicksand<\/jats:italic> is a narrative dependent on the protagonist\u2019s refusal to marry because of her equation of marriage with conception. Reading these narratives together affords us the opportunity to consider what \u2018unmotherhood\u2019 means as a constructed state in and of itself, beyond the presumed negative, passive state of the \u2018not\u2019 or the \u2018not yet\u2019. Through this analysis, I define \u2018unmotherhood\u2019 as: (1) a state mediated through medical knowledge, objects, spaces and authority figures; (2) an experience narrated through vocabularies pulled from phenomena closely associated with 20th-century modernity and (3) a role dynamically shaped through compulsory heterosexuality embedded in familial relationships. In these three ways, my analysis of the selected novels defines unmotherhood as a permanent, transient, chosen, enforced and\u2014contradictory as it all may be\u2014a legible and definable experience.<\/jats:p>","DOI":"10.1136\/medhum-2023-012857","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2024,5,27]],"date-time":"2024-05-27T13:20:29Z","timestamp":1716816029000},"page":"266-275","update-policy":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1136\/crossmarkpolicy","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":1,"title":["\u2018What\u2019s a D and C between friends?\u2019 Space, intimacy and the medicalisation of unmotherhood in modernist literature"],"prefix":"10.1136","volume":"50","author":[{"given":"Kate","family":"Schnur","sequence":"first","affiliation":[{"name":"CUNY Queens College, New York, New York, USA"}],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]}],"member":"239","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2024,5,27]]},"reference":[{"issue":"3","key":"2025092412072802000_50.2.266.1","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"801","DOI":"10.1353\/elh.2018.0029","article-title":"\u201cLiberal Use of Possession: Intellectuals, Abortion, and Tess Slesinger\u2019s Modernism.\u201d","volume":"85","author":"Afflerbach","year":"2018","journal-title":"ELH"},{"issue":"2","key":"2025092412072802000_50.2.266.2","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"7","DOI":"10.33596\/anth.319","article-title":"\u201cThe Anxiety of Racialized Sexuality in Jean Rhys.\u201d","volume":"13","author":"Athanassakis","year":"2016","journal-title":"Anthurium A Caribbean Studies Journal"},{"issue":"1","key":"2025092412072802000_50.2.266.3","first-page":"140","article-title":"\u201cMeaning-Making among Intentionally Childless Women.\u201d","volume":"38","author":"Brooks","year":"2019","journal-title":"International Journal of Transpersonal Studies"},{"issue":"1","key":"2025092412072802000_50.2.266.4","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"66","DOI":"10.1080\/09699082.2016.1234136","article-title":"\u201cI Had a Baby, I Mean, I Didn\u2019t, in an Air Raid\u2019: War and Stillbirth in H.D.\u2019s Asphodel.\u201d","volume":"24","author":"Brunton","year":"2017","journal-title":"Women\u2019s Writing"},{"key":"2025092412072802000_50.2.266.5","unstructured":"Capo B. 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