Nancy Caldwell Sorel "Ever Since Eve: Personal Reflections on Childbirth."
Describes people's reaction to childbirth, pregnancy, parenthood, twins, and adoption in the past, present, and fiction.
A clutch of sparkling, wonderful excerpts from essays, fiction, and life shows that the experience of launching a child into the world unites many women and certainly some men. Sharp-tongued Dorothy Parker rails against the slipshod biology that makes carrying and delivering a child so time-consuming. Kitty writhes in childbirth in a scene from Anna Karenina. Novelist Toni Cade Bambara lampoons a wanna-be revolutionary who "castigated the Sisters to throw away the pill and hop to the mattresses and breed revolutionaries."
"What's it like?" From time immemorial, younger women have been asking older women this question about the birth experience. Here at last is a book that brings together the reactions of a wide array of women--rich and poor, famous and not-so-famous, contemporary and historic, American and European and even Eskimo. Whether told in their own words or vividly recounted by Nancy Sorel, the poignant, some tragic--explained in human terms as no clinical description in the standard childbirth texts can what the experience of having a baby is really like.
Ranging from Sophia Loren to Queen Victoria, from Colette to Elzire Dionne, the book shows how childbirth is a process which is unique in each instance, even while it is essentially he same for everyone. Every birth is by its nature inherently dramatic, and the book shows how people are changed by the event, even people who never expected to be deeply affected. Some of the most revealing pieces in the book document the reactions of men to fatherhood, men as diverse as Napoleon and W.C Fields. Also included are some of the outstanding pregnancy scenes from literature, including that of Kitty in "Anna Karenina" and Catherine in a "Farewell to Arms."
Replete with fascinating vignettes, Ever Since Eve offers a look at childbirth in different parts of the globe, as well as some intriguing footnotes to history, as it presents a view of some public figures in their most private moments. Compelling reading for every pregnant woman, this book will be a treasured keepsake for anyone who has ever had a baby--or who would like to.
Oxford University Press; First Edition. 1984.
New book. Tiny taped tear on DJ. Very minor shelf wear from rubbing.