f The maternal impulse as ghost: Three hauntings in contemporary women’s fiction

This article offers a critical reading of three short stories, each of which explores the extent to which its protagonist is literally, as well as figuratively, haunted by the desire for a child. Firstly, the notion of textual haunting is proposed through an intratextual reading of each of these short stories within the author’s work as a whole. Secondly, the hauntings undergone by the protagonists are analysed, both through close reading and through the notions of abjection and intergenerational haunting.