<i>Picassos Woman: A Breast Cancer Story</i> (1994) and <i>Ordinary Life: A Memoir of Illness</i> (1997) tell of the breast cancer experiences of Rosalind MacPhee and Kathlyn Conway, respectively. This thesis examines how three particular social movementsthe breast cancer, healthy-mindedness, and new momism movements, all described in Chapter Oneaffect how MacPhee and Conway experience breast cancer and then write about it in the 1990s. Chapter Two examines the language of war that MacPhee and Conway adopt to describe illness and how such language leads them to examine the possibility proposed by the healthy-mindedness movement: that they are personally responsible for bringing a determined killer (Conway 125) into their lives. Chapter Three studies their active patient behaviours, as advocated by the breast cancer movement, as well as their more passive ones. I consider the relation between these active and passive behaviours in light of the severe nature of mastectomies and the presentation of post-surgical options. Chapter Four investigates how MacPhee and Conway struggle to maintain their roles as supermoms, busily attending to responsibilities at home and work, while simultaneously managing their recoveries. In each Chapter, the influence of the social movements named above becomes apparent as MacPhee and Conway attempt to move themselves and others out of the breast cancer experience and back into a sense of normality (MacPhee 106).
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:USASK/oai:usask.ca:etd-12192009-142949 |
| Date | 22 December 2009 |
| Creators | Ehalt, Brette |
| Contributors | Clark, Hilary, Teucher, Ulrich, Stephanson, Raymond, James-Cavan, Kathleen, Cooley, Ronald |
| Publisher | University of Saskatchewan |
| Source Sets | University of Saskatchewan Library |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Source | http://library.usask.ca/theses/available/etd-12192009-142949/ |
| Rights | restricted, I hereby certify that, if appropriate, I have obtained and attached hereto a written permission statement from the owner(s) of each third party copyrighted matter to be included in my thesis, dissertation, or project report, allowing distribution as specified below. I certify that the version I submitted is the same as that approved by my advisory committee. I hereby grant to University of Saskatchewan or its agents the non-exclusive license to archive and make accessible, under the conditions specified below, my thesis, dissertation, or project report in whole or in part in all forms of media, now or hereafter known. I retain all other ownership rights to the copyright of the thesis, dissertation or project report. I also retain the right to use in future works (such as articles or books) all or part of this thesis, dissertation, or project report. |
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