Parenthood as a Theme in English Literature

Paper Summary:

The author of this paper looks at the subject of parenthood as it appears in English literature. The paper discusses works written by authors such as Milton and Shakespeare in the 16th and 17th centuries through to the 20th century and authors such as William Golding and Margaret Atwood.

From the Paper:

"The 20th century saw a number of literary developments and experiments. On the one hand, The Lord of the Flies, 1984 and A Brave New World, propose dystopian visions of parenthood. In the first, parental control is totally absent from an aggressive, deathly atmosphere. The second represents twisted political machinery because of which children send their parents to death. The third speculates about the implications of planned parenthood if carried too far. On the other hand, Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale (1985) focuses on birth as a metaphor of writing and artistic creation. Atwood likens the conception of a story to the conception of a child, and the writing process to a painful delivery."

Sample of Sources Used:

• Backus, Margot Gayle. The Gothic Family Romance. Heterosexuality, Child Sacrifice and the Anglo-Irish Colonial Order, Durham and London: Duke University Press, 1999
• Erickson, Robert A. Mother Midnight. Birth, Sex, and Fate in Eighteenth-Century Fiction (Defoe, Richardson, and Sterne), New York (USA): AMS Press Inc., 1986
• Flint, Christopher. Family Fictions. Narrative and Domestic Relations in Britain, 1688 - 1798, Stanford (California, USA): Stanford University Press, 1998
• Hilton, Mary. Women and the Shaping of the Nation's Young. Education and Public Doctrine in Britain 1750 - 1850, Ashgate Publishing Ltd., 2007
• McKeon, Michael. The Secret History of Domesticity - Public, Private, and the Division of Knowledge, The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2005

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