The coronavirus pandemic has prompted renewed scholarly and popular interest in epidemic fiction, from biomedical thrillers to dystopian tales of disease-desolated worlds. While fiction may cultivate our expectations about the probable paths of the pandemic, it also invites us to participate in the creative process of imagining alternative futures. This essay examines how two recent novels, Ling Ma's Severance (2018) and Karen Thomson Walker's The Dreamers (2019), offer feminist refigurations of the genre Priscilla Wald has termed "the outbreak narrative." Shifting emphasis from the epidemiological quest plot that has tended to dominate this genre, both novels focus on everyday cultures and ethics of care, illustrating how patriarchal systems produce and perpetuate conditions of vulnerability. In particular, pregnancy plots in both novels work to interrogate cultures of paternalism, raising key ethical questions about limitations and violations of the bodily autonomy. Illuminating, in spectacular and speculative fashion, how conditions of inequality and precarity are radically revealed and intensified by a public health crisis, novels like Severance and The Dreamers are essential tools for teaching about-and living through-the crisis of our pandemic present.

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当您期望流行时会发生什么：马玲的遣散费和凯伦·汤姆森·沃克的《梦想家》。

冠状病毒大流行促使人们对流行小说重新引起学术界和公众的兴趣，从生物医学惊悚片到疾病荒芜的世界的反乌托邦故事。尽管小说可能使我们对大流行的可能路径抱有期望，但它也邀请我们参与想象替代性未来的创造过程。本文探讨了最近的两部小说，《马玲》（Singance）（2018年）和凯伦•汤姆森•沃克（Karen Thomson Walker）的《梦想家》（The Dreamers，2019年）如何对女主角普里西拉·瓦尔德（Priscilla Wald）所说的“爆发叙事”进行了女性化的修饰。从强调流行病学的情节图上转移了重点，这两本小说都把重点放在了日常文化和护理伦理上，说明了父权制是如何产生和维持弱势条件的。特别是，这两部小说中的怀孕情节都试图审理家长式的文化，提出了关于限制和侵犯身体自治的关键伦理问题。诸如Severance和The Dreamers之类的小说以惊人的和投机的方式照亮了公共卫生危机如何从根本上揭示和加剧不平等和不稳定的状况，这些小说是教导和应对当前大流行危机的基本工具。