Unwoman

‘[…] My love, so please you, shall requite No woman, whether dark or bright, Unwomaned if she be.’

Not all her anxiety for Arthur, not all her personal wretchedness, could unwoman the minister’s mother so much as to make her forgive or overlook Phœbe’s presumption.

“He says I am not feminine, that I act like a man, that I’m too aggressive. I say that he unwomans me, because he doesn’t do the man’s work in the home, and I have to—somebody has to! […]”

The muslin dress unwomans her, a crude navy blue […] which buttons at the nape of her neck and drops past her knees in stiff irregular folds. Oh it hangs, it hangs, sack bag barrel. Even her waist is not hugged by it and there are no darts in consideration of her breasts.

To make historical sense of these writers' continual struggle with womanness, consider more closely how unwomaning did and did not work under chattel slavery. […] pregnant workers received no differential treatment, and slave motherhood was not (as Spillers finds in North America) a way for females to become women. […]

By allowing herself and her unborn child to be executed, effectively she is permitting an abortion and by extension, becoming an “unwoman.”