Narrative futures of pregnancy sickness: reproduction, disability, animality

Abstract

In Sarah Hall’s short story ‘Mrs Fox’, a man wakes to find his wife, Sophia, vomiting. When Sophia’s nausea continues, he imagines her wasting from a rare cancer; instead, she mutates into a fox and, after a brief captivity at their home, leaves him for the woods, only to reappear months later with a litter he claims as his progeny. Sophia’s sickness is belatedly revealed as nausea and vomiting of pregnancy (NVP), and her metamorphosis from human into fox seems to have been triggered by conception. NVP, or ‘morning sickness’ as it is colloquially known, tends to appear in culture as plot reveal or punchline but rarely as experience. This narrative marginalisation parallels the condition’s medical status. In its most severe form,hyperemesis gravidarum, NVP can lead to malnutrition and other serious health complications. However, the condition often goes untreated, a situation that has been linked to cultural fears of congenital disability in the wake of thalidomide. Long assumed to derive from the pregnancy hormone human chorionic gonadotropin, NVP is the subject of new genetic research that may hold the potential for new therapeutic interventions. Yet this research may also reinforce the theory that NVP is an evolutionary mechanism designed to isolate pregnant people from pathogens during the first trimester. In this article, I draw on this context to read ‘Mrs Fox’ as an ironic allegory of the ‘evolutionary safety net’ explanation for NVP. Drawing on work at the intersection of disability justice and reproductive justice, I argue that the therapeutic futures opened up by new research into NVP spotlight the need for closer attention to narratives of gestational sickness.