Word: ovum
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...Lonely Ovum...
Such observations have set many a feminist off on fanciful speculations of her own. Author Mary Ellmann, for instance, has noted that "each month the ovum undertakes an extraordinary expedition from the ovary through the Fallopian tubes to the uterus, an unseen equivalent of going down the Mississippi on a raft or over Niagara Falls in a barrel. Ordinarily, too, the ovum travels singly, like Lewis or Clark, in the kind of existential loneliness which Norman Mailer usually admires. One might say that the activity of ova involves a daring and independence absent, in fact, from the activity of spermatozoa...
...factor over which would-be parents have some control, provided they start to exercise it early enough, is the age of the ovum at the time of conception. Rockefeller University's Dr. E. Witschi reported that studies in several animal species show that an old or "stale" egg is especially likely, if fertilized, to result in the birth of a defective baby. In humans, it is known that the risk of having a mongoloid, for instance, increases from one in 2,000 births for a woman at age 25 to one in 50 at age 45. For a woman...
...Night-Sea Journey" is a monologue of a spermatazoa on its way to the ovum. It is amusing, and, unlike the other stories, is about love, however abstractly that compact may be presented. There is, though, a basic flaw in the piece: In fantastic literature, the author is allowed to make any conditions he likes, but once these are established, the action must be within their limits. The reader will allow Barth to allow a spermatazoa to meditate, but he cannot allow that spermatazoa to record theories about his purpose (correct in every detail)--which theories no spermatazoa could ever...
...immobility is attributed to the entire female constitution by analogy with the supposed immobility of the ovum.... In actuality, each month the ovum undertakes an extraordinary expedition,...an unseen equivalent of going down the Mississippi on a raft or over Niagara Falls in a barrel. Ordinarily too, the ovum travels singly, like Lewis or Clark, in the kind of existential loneliness which Norman Mailer usually admires. One might say that the activity of ova involves a daring and independence absent, in fact, from the activity of spermatozoa, which move in jostling masses, swarming out on signal like a crowd...