The Woman Who Gave Birth to Rabbits: Stories [Hardcover]

Emma Donoghue (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 1, 2002

Donoghue finds her inspiration for these wry, robust tales in obscure scraps of historical records: an engraving of a woman giving birth to rabbits; a plague ballad; surgical case notes; theological pamphlets; an articulated skeleton. Here kings, surgeons, soldiers, and ladies of leisure rub shoulders with cross-dressers, cult leaders, poisoners, and arsonists.

Whether she's spinning the tale of an Irish soldier tricked into marrying a dowdy spinster, a Victorian surgeon's attempts to "improve" women, a seventeenth-century countess who ran away to Italy disguised as a man, or an "undead" murderess returning for the maid she left behind to be executed in her place, Emma Donoghue brings to her stories an "elegant, colorful prose filled with unforgettable sights, sounds and smells" (Elle). Here she summons the ghosts of those women who counted for nothing in their own day, but who come to unforgettable life in fiction.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

In the spirit of her praised novel, Slammerkin, Donoghue has created a series of stories infused by a lively imagination. Set in England and Ireland, these 15 tales have their genesis in obscure bits of history and folklore, from which Donoghue extrapolates possible endings. Most take place in the 17th and 18th centuries, when women had few rights and little freedom; though the protagonists are often extraordinary, their circumstances render them powerless. "Words for Things" is a restrained but moving tale of the ambiguous relationship between Margaret Kingsborough, a clever Irish adolescent dominated by her vicious mother, and her governess, "Mistress Mary," whom alert readers will guess is Mary Wollstonecraft. This lovely story's faltering and vague end is explained by an author's note revealing that years later, Margaret Kingsborough became a friend of Wollstonecraft's daughter, Mary Shelley. A writer with a finely attuned ear, Donoghue varies the rhythms of her prose to reflect the range of language appropriate to her characters' social station. Disillusion colors the voice of peasant woman Mary Toft, who in the 1720s conspired with her doctor to convince the public she was giving birth to rabbits. She lived to rue her trick and to realize that "it is the way of the world for a woman's legs to be open." In "Cured," a working woman with chronic pain is mutilated by a quack doctor. "Figures of Speech" depicts a noblewoman in the agonies of childbirth, incredulous that she may die "like any normal woman, in a bed of sweat and blood and sh-t." For Donoghue's characters, as with their real historical counterparts, there is no escape from "the lot of womanhood." If they sometimes seem to drive her point home with unrelieved intensity, her eloquent stories elicit indignation and sorrow.
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

From ballads, epitaphs, paintings, tombstones, and diary fragments, Donoghue (Slammerkin) has fashioned a collection of historical tales about what might have happened to women who have piqued her curiosity and fired her imagination. In the title story, after a pregnant woman stuns her husband by pretending to give birth to the rabbit she was preparing for dinner, she is persuaded to take the charade further, go on tour, and see whether she can dupe the public into coming to view her "offspring." Some of these tales feature acts of breathtaking cruelty: in "Revelations," a religious cult leader convinces her followers to fast for 40 days in order to welcome their new messiah properly; and in "Cured," a Victorian gynecologist with a perverse sense of morality performs corrective surgery on his unsuspecting patients. Many of these stories deal with women who nurture deep (and sometimes unspoken) passion for other women, as in "How a Lady Dies," in which a close friend of Frances Sheridan, the noted playwright's wife, allows herself to succumb to illness and death rather than face a life without her true love. Each portrait is so strikingly original and so utterly convincing that readers will be hard pressed to believe the story could have happened any other way. Enthusiastically recommended. Barbara Love, Kingston Frontenac P.L., Ont.
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 272 pages
• Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt; 1st edition (May 1, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0151009376
• ISBN-13: 978-0151009374
• Product Dimensions: 8.1 x 5.5 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,822,945 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Born in Dublin in 1969, Emma Donoghue is a writer of contemporary and historical fiction whose novels include the bestselling "Slammerkin," "The Sealed Letter," "Landing," "Life Mask," "Hood," and "Stirfry." Her story collections are "The Woman Who Gave Birth to Rabbits," "Kissing the Witch," and "Touchy Subjects." She also writes literary history, and plays for stage and radio. She lives in London, Ontario, with her partner and their two small children.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

13 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Interesting premise, but somewhat disappointing, August 20, 2002

By 

LaLoren - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Woman Who Gave Birth to Rabbits: Stories (Hardcover)

Being both a fiction writer and historian, Emma Donahue has compiled a book of short stories based on events and people she came across in her research. In many cases all she had to work with were one or two sentences, a name, or a rather fantastic story. So she took it upon herself to create the stories and characters that might be behind these brief bits of information.

It's an interesting idea, and the actual writing is flowing and poetic, however, the majority of these stories ultimately disappointed me. Sometimes it's because her stories are a little too obvious, as with the title story. If you are going to write about a woman who is reported to have given birth to rabbits, and you want to give a logical explanation, a scam is about the only explanation you can come up with. THe only room for creativity is in why these folks decided to try it and how they came up with it, both of which I found to lack much depth.

The greatest shortcoming, however, was in the length of the stories. When the main purpose is to develop a character behind a bit of news, it requires far more words. THese stories were more on the order of short shorts. Yet because they were based on actual events, the surprise endings and plot turns required to make a short short work, are not here. Therefore the reader is ultimately left unsatisfied and wondering why the story needed to be written in the first place.

Oddly enough, the only story that appealed to me was the last one, Looking for Petronella. This story was quite a bit longer than the others and had more depth. The plot was also a lot more creative. It was almost as though the author needed to build her momentum to reach this point.

All in all this is not a bad read, but nothing I need to keep on my bookshelf.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Rabbit Tales, February 28, 2005

By 

Little Old Me - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Woman Who Gave Birth to Rabbits: Stories (Hardcover)

Such an amazing short story collection - Emma Donoghue's historic fiction is gorgeously written. As a historian, Donoghue has stumbled upon brilliant sotries of extraordinary women lost over time. These seventeen vivacious tales take us back through the last few centuries in England and Ireland, fleshing out personal accounts discovered through lost letters and archives.

The first story, "The Last Rabbit" is an excellent build up for the entire collection. Donoghue narrates the experiences of Mary Toft, who in the 1700's tricked her Irish town and half of London into believing that she could give birth to rabbits. While medical experts tried to desperately to disprove the hoax, Mary suffers the indignities of being a medical marvel, suffering embarrasing examinations from an assortment of "birth experts" and speculators. Her own comentary practically relates childbirth to a form of prostitution, which makes sense that in the last scene she discovers that she has been taken to a brothel to give birth to her rabbits. Marriage, childbirth and the historical low status of women take up most of the storylines. In "Acts of Union", a syphallis infected soldier is tricked into marrying an apothecary's spinster-niece. Though the soldier certainly sees himself a victim, his bride seems to have settled for worse, but is left knowing that this is her only opportunity to marry.

There is a certain richness to Donoghue's writing, dealing with religious and social misogyny. Her heroines are strangely tough, vulgar and sometimes shrewd, but there is a undeniable dignity to them. Later characters include a cult leader, a wheel-chair bound woman who leads rescue teams for drowning sailors and a pregnant countess convinced that she'll die during childbirth. One added bonus is that each chapter includes the historic contents of the protagonists, lists the articles and letters that the author used in her research. Not only are the stories based on some reality, but they feel very real. You can not doubt that you have learned something.

THE WOMAN WHO GAVE BIRTH TO RABBITS is an amazing piece of literature. Historical fiction has never been a big interest of mine, but Emma Donoghue has changed that with this one book.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars If you ever wondered..., February 5, 2004

By A Customer

This review is from: The Woman Who Gave Birth to Rabbits: Stories (Paperback)

...what the lives of others were like, the others being those figures in history you may have heard or read about, or perhaps just a no-name other, then this is the book for you. Ms. Donoghue finds snippets of information about historical women and crafts a little larger snippet of life for them. The stories are not long, and I feel justifiably so. These are just tastes, just notions of what life might have been like. They are dreams, creations on a whim to explain the life of a woman so very long ago in England.

Ms. Donoghue's writing is wonderful. It has a musical quality, shows its humor and tenderness, greed and hesitation. Her imagination is rich and deep, and her research astounding for such small stories.

This is a thoroughly enjoyable book that I would easily recommend.