Subject manipulation in texts
Our answer (description 1)
"Adequate expulsive force is called into action . . . At length the
force conquers all resistance, and with a throe of agony the head
is expelled . . ".
(birth in a 19th century obstetrics textbook)
The first clause of this extract ('Adequate force is called into action':
SPA) involves a noun phrase (with an abstract noun as its headword)
as the subject of a passive construction. Moreover, the optional 'by
+ agent' adverbial has been deleted deleted. Hence we don't know who
or what called the force into action (and whatever it is also appears
to be acting on an abstraction rather than on something concrete).
In the second clause ('At length the force conquers all resistance':
ASPO) another abstract noun phrase with the same head noun is subject
to an active transitive predicator. So now the abstraction is, in turn,
acting upon something else, which also turns out to be abstract ('all
resistance').
The final clause ('and with a throe of agony the head is expelled': CjASP),
like the first one, is an agentless passive. So in this excerpt we never
find out who or what is the agent causing what happens, and everything
is described in very abstract terms apart from the reference to the baby's
head. Mother and child (and particularly the mother) don't appear to be
very important. This representation of childbirth, presumably written
by a male medic, given its date, is thus one which seems rather far from
the painful physical reality, and is also likely to be criticised by feminists
who object to 'male domination' on the grounds that the mother doesn't
seem to get much of a role in the process. That said, from the viewpoint
of birthing mothers, the representation may not seem quite so strange,
as they are clearly not in control of the process at all.
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