Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: http://hdl.handle.net/1959.3/222974

Title

The change of life, the sorrow of life: menopause, bad blood and cancer among Italian-Australian working class women

Author(s)

Gifford, S. M.

Abstract

This paper explores the discourse of menopause, health and illness among 20 middle aged Italo-Australian working class women living in Melbourne. Using the methods of interpretative anthropology and the perspectives of critical feminist theory, I argue that women's discourse about health and illness is one way in which they express feelings of loss over the fertility of their youth, ambivalences about their lives in Australia, and grief over a life left behind in Italy. These losses are experienced physically and expressed metaphorically through conditions of bad blood and nerves and are perceived to contribute to their vulnerability to a range of diseases including cancer. For these women, the change of life is experienced as the end of life and their fear of cancer is representative of their fears of social and physical death. Cancer is also seen to be a disease more common in Australia and is used as a metaphor for expressing anxieties relating to feelings of placelessness, of being disconnected from one's roots, and anxieties about becoming old and dying far from 'home.'

Publication type

Journal article

Source

Culture, Medicine and Psychiatry, Vol. 18, no. 3 (Sep 1994), pp. 299-319

Publication year

1994

Keyword(s)

Attitude to death;  Attitude to health;  Australia;  Blood pressure;  Emigration and immigration;  Ethnic groups;  Ethnology;  Italy;  Life change events;  Life event;  Menopause;  Migration;  Neoplasms;  Psychological aspect;  Traditional medicine;  Verbal behavior;  Working women

Publisher

Kluwer Academic Publishers

ISSN

0165-005X

Publisher URL

http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/bf01379229

Copyright

Copyright © 1994 Kluwer Academic Publishers.

Peer reviewed