•  Margaret Edson’s play, Wit, portrays a professor of metaphysical poetry, especially the work of John Donne, who struggles to accept the inevitability of her own death after being diagnosed with ovarian cancer. A scathing commentary on the ethos of medical intervention driven by the imperatives of research rather than care, the play traces, too, the friendship between the dying scholar and her attending nurse. Wit won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1999 and was adapted into a 2001 television movie, starring Emma Thompson.

•  Another strong-willed woman is portrayed by Margaret Laurence in her novel The Stone Angel (1964). Ninety-year-old Hagar Shipley remembers her life on the Canadian frontier and the disintegration of her marriage, and nearing the end of her life, she faces failing physical and mental health.

•  Clara Bingham and...