Staying with Narrative: Stories of Shame and Gynecological Pain

Cheston, Katharine

Abstract

Storytelling is good for us—or so we are told. This article examines two memoirs, by Hilary Mantel and Susanna Kaysen, in which narrating experiences of gynecological pain provokes shame and deepens pain. By attending to shame as a textual presence, I intervene in a longstanding debate about how to make sense of pain and illness. Shame, I argue, reveals the presence of multiple (and often contrasting) illness narratives; I analyze these narratives, and their interplay, across Mantel's and Kaysen's memoirs. As scholarship moves beyond, past, or post-narrative, I urge us to stay: to interrogate the ways in which illness narratives interact—amplifying some stories and storytellers whilst fragmenting or silencing others—and to examine the responsibility we all have within this collective sense-making.

Citation

Cheston, K. (2023). Staying with Narrative: Stories of Shame and Gynecological Pain. Literature and Medicine, 41(2), 391-415. https://doi.org/10.1353/lm.2023.a921569

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Aug 10, 2023
• Online Publication Date: Mar 12, 2024
• Publication Date: 2023-09
• Deposit Date: Mar 21, 2024
• Publicly Available Date: Mar 21, 2024
• Journal: Literature and Medicine
• Print ISSN: 1080-6571
• Electronic ISSN: 0278-9671
• Publisher: Johns Hopkins University Press
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 41
• Issue: 2
• Pages: 391-415
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1353/lm.2023.a921569
• Public URL: https://durham-repository.worktribe.com/output/2334628