Solidarity, Alienation, and Fleeting Utopias

Hospital Representations in Danish Motherhood Literature

Abstract

Mapping a shift in contemporary Danish motherhood literature, this article moves from Dea Trier Mørch’s Vinterbørn (1976), where the hospital appears as a solidaristic commons, to twenty-first-century depictions of hospital spaces marked by scarcity, surveillance, and depersonalization. Through cross readings of works by Dy Plambeck, Cecilie Lind, Julie Sten-Knudsen, Liv Nimand Duvå, Lea Marie Løppenthin, and Asta Olivia Nordenhof, and drawing on feminist critiques of institutionalized childbirth and post-welfare literary theory, I argue that reproductive scenes crystallize the welfare state’s care crisis. Yet alongside institutional failure, the texts sketch fragile utopias in everyday attachments and more-than-human attentiveness—counter-images that reimagine rhythms of care beyond the institution while remaining entangled with it. Contemporary motherhood literature thus emerges as a key site for investigating the double movement of disidentification and dependency in late-welfare imaginaries.