"Your breasts/sliced off": literary images of breast cancer.

"Your breasts/sliced off": literary images of breast cancer.

Wear D

Women & health

1993

1993

This essay explores how breast cancer and mastectomy are portrayed in twentieth-century North American literature. The purpose in doing so is to examine our understandings of how women in contemporary North American culture may experience this potentially fatal disease and disfigurement-understandings that often are narrowly prescribed by the abstract, universalizing language of medicine. The essay is divided into four sections based on the readings of the selected literature: denial and fear; sadness and pain; shame through others' eyes; and transcendence.

Adult; Female; Humans; Middle Aged; *Women's Health; *Medicine in Literature; Mastectomy/*psychology; North America; *Poetry as Topic; *Drama; Breast Neoplasms/*psychology/surgery; Denial (Psychology); Stress; Psychological/*etiology

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