Maternal body and voice in Toni Morrison, Bobbie Ann Mason, and Lee Smith
By: Paula Gallant Eckard.
Publisher: University of Missouri Press
Published: 2002
Place of publication: Columbia
Language: eng
Number of pages: 227
Subjects: Smith, Lee, 1944- -- Characters -- Mothers; Mason, Bobbie Ann -- Characters -- Mothers; Morrison, Toni -- Characters -- Mothers; American fiction -- Women authors -- History and criticism; Mothers in literature; Women and literature -- United States -- History -- 20th century; American fiction -- 20th century -- History and criticism; Mother and child in literature; Body, Human, in literature; Motherhood in literature; Voice in literature
Description: "Throughout human history, motherhood and maternal experience have been largely defined and written by patriarchal culture. Religion, art, medicine, psychoanalysis, and other bastions of male power have objectified the maternal and have disregarded female subjectivity. As a result, maternal perspectives have been ignored and the mother's voice silenced.

In recent literary texts, however, more substantial attention has been given to motherhood and to the physical, psychological, social, and cultural dynamics affecting maternal experience. In Maternal Body and Voice in Toni Morrison, Bobbie Ann Mason, and Lee Smith, Paula Gallant Eckard examines how maternal experience is depicted in selected novels by three American writers, emphasizing how they focus on the body and the voice of the mother."--BOOK JACKET.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. 207-216) and index.