Subject manipulation in texts
Our answer (description 3 )
"You may feel an amazing urge to bear down . . . Your uterus contracts
. . ."
(birth in Our Bodies, Ourselves)
This is the only example where the mother turns up as the subject of
a predicator ('You may feel an amazing urge to bear down': SPO). This
thus seems nearer the sort of representation that modern feminists would
prefer (and given the book's title, it is clear that the authors want
to stress the idea that women should 'own' and be in control of their
bodies). But even here, although the 2nd-person pronoun 'direct address'
narrative form is used, the mother is still not really in control (and
presumably never really could be, given the nature of the event). The
object of the first clause is clearly a noun phrase with a head noun
('urge') derived from a verb, suggesting the mother is at the mercy
of an uncontrollable force. And as with 'the walls of the womb' in the
Penelope Leach extract, in the second clause we see a part of the woman
as subject to the dynamic verb, again suggesting lack of control on
the mother's part. At least here the uterus is referred to in personal
terms (cf. the possessive pronoun determiner compared with the definite
article in the earlier extracts).
Overall, we can see a change in style towards one where the women giving
birth are human, personalised agents. But it is the nature of the activity
that means that the mothers can never really be in control of the process,
however much they would like to be. As the American poet, Sylvia Plath,
put it in a poem ('Metaphors) about being pregnant,
I've . . .
Boarded the train there's no getting off.
It appears that she was in control when she boarded the train (became
pregnant), but after that her role as a controlling agent seems to disappear.
|
