pregnancies in Literature

[cacian]

what short stories/books confine with unwanted or infamous pregnancies in other words disgraced women.
the first that comes to mind is:

The French Lieutenant Woman:
set in the mid-nineteenth century, the narrator identifies the novel's protagonist as Sarah Woodruff, the Woman of the title, also known as "Tragedy" and as "The French Lieutenant's Whore". She lives in the coastal town of Lyme Regis, as a disgraced woman, supposedly abandoned by a French naval officer named Varguennes. Unknown to her at first, he was married to another woman. Varguennes had returned to France. She spends her limited time off at The Cobb, a pier jutting out to sea, where she stares at the sea.

and then

the name Fitzgerald I am told is a name that refers to a son that has an undeclared father.

[JHG]

Eh, that dynamic always seemed sensational ("You can't leave, I'm pregnant!").

Nonetheless, it does present an effective way of pre-casting and/or damning women in a production. I think of As I lay Dying, where the issue was (imo) brilliantly presented by Faulkner, giving one a predisposition to harsh judgment without ever meeting the mother, Addie.

[kev67]

Arthur Seaton makes his lover pregnant in Saturday Night and Sunday Morning by Alan Sillitoe, but she gets rid of it by sitting in a bath as hot as she can stand, while drinking a bottle of gin. She is married to someone else and she already has two children. Martha Quest tries to use the same technique to get rid of her baby in A Proper Marriage by Doris Lessing, but she is too far into her term and it does not work. Martha is newly wed, but she does not love her husband, and does not want to live a domestic, family life.

[cacian]

Arthur Seaton makes his lover pregnant in Saturday Night and Sunday Morning by Alan Sillitoe, but she gets rid of it by sitting in a bath as hot as she can stand, while drinking a bottle of gin. She is married to someone else and she already has two children. Martha Quest tries to use the same technique to get rid of her baby in A Proper Marriage by Doris Lessing, but she is too far into her term and it does not work. Martha is newly wed, but she does not love her husband, and does not want to live a domestic, family life.

what a contrast and rather telling. Literature tailors solutions such as these in stories I think they ought to be careful in case someone else reading.

[Lykren]

These aren't all necessarily 'disgraceful' pregnancies:

Wu Yueh-Niang's (accidentally aborted) pregnancy in Jin Ping Mei.

Emma's in Madame Bovary (though interestingly the pregnancy and the daughter that follows seem to play a small role in her life - so far - I haven't finished it yet).

Aoi no Ue's pregnancy in Genji Monogatari.

And how could we forget the eternal pregnancy of Tristram Shandy's mother?

Taeko's pregnancy in The Makioka Sisters.

Anna Karenina's.