Abstract
The article investigates the history of literary childbirths, with special emphasis on the mother's presentation. Examples from English and American writers since the 17th century are considered in the light of the attitudes towards and customs of childbirth in their respective periods. Particular attention is devoted to recent women's literature, where the subject of childbirth has received prominent and original treatment. Modern women writers openly explore the physical and psychological sides of an experience distinctive of their sex; they also employ childbirth as a metaphor for societal conditions or ways of (female) existence, and have developed their own view of the conventional comparison of birth and artistic creation.
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