Date of Defense

12-8-2025

Date of Graduation

12-2025

Department

English

First Advisor

Adrienne Redding

Second Advisor

Lauren Foley

Third Advisor

Laura Citino

Abstract

Have you ever swallowed a watermelon seed and worried it would grow inside you? In Reap (Her), this childhood fear is actualized. The story centers around Mauve, a wife and mother to three boys, living in East Palestine, Ohio. After a train derailment poisons the ground, making it impossible to grow produce, the people are granted a miracle, the miracle of fertility. Women are able to grow fruits and vegetables inside their uteri and bear them to help feed their families. Mauve’s daily life is upturned by the arrival of unsealed court documents concerning a case from her teenage years. As she sifts through the documents, concerns around the destruction of immature produce and secrets from the past emerge, forcing her to take action. The work combines themes of feminist body horror and environmental apocalypse to generate critiques of current politics. The premise itself highlights the amount of domestic labor women provide and the sacrifice it demands as a comment on the cost of consumption. Often, the invisible labor of women and workers is dismissed as an expectation. In reality, there is an incredible cost to being a stay-at-home mother or having fresh strawberries in the middle of January. Dramatizing this cost by vesting it in the body highlights the true consequences of consumerism and greed. Further, it illustrates how being a woman is already a body-horror experience, as the medical consequences of bearing fruit are adapted from actual pregnancy side effects. The court case, where Mauve is charged with “malicious destruction of crops,” parallels concerns surrounding abortion. Real language from the Dobbs decision and Chapter 170A from the Texas Health and Safety Code are interspersed in the legal documents to show the destructive effects of drastically limiting abortion access. Through this blend of reality and fiction, arts and politics, the delicious and the disgusting, Reap (Her) aims to challenge existing social norms and highlight the need to change course. If we aren’t careful, we’ll eat ourselves alive.

Access Setting

Honors Thesis-Restricted

Restricted to Campus until

3-16-2027

Download

Available for download on Tuesday, March 16, 2027

Share

COinS