Gender, Pregnancy and Power in Eighteenth-Century Literature

This book reveals the cultural significance of the pregnant woman by examining major eighteenth-century debates concerning separate spheres, man-midwifery, performance, marriage, the body, education, and creative imagination. Exploring medical, economic, moral, and literary ramifications, this book engages critically with the notion that a pregnant woman could alter the development of her foetus with the power of her thoughts and feelings. Eighteenth-century authors sought urgently to define, understand and control the concept of maternal imagination as they responded to and provoked fundamental questions about female intellect and the relationship between mind and body. Interrogating the multiple models of maternal imagination both separately and as a holistic set of socio-cultural components, the author uncovers the discourse of maternal imagination across eighteenth-century drama, popular print, medical texts, poetry and novels. This overdue rehabilitation of the pregnant woman in literature is essential reading for scholars of the eighteenth century, gender and literary history.

Provides a much-needed chronological narrative of the maternal imagination Investigates concerns that are still current today, such as acceptable prenatal care, responsibility for abnormal births, gendered minds, and the role of the father Looks at a broad range of well-known writers, such as Samuel Richardson, Tobias Smollett, Laurence Sterne, Anna-Laetitia Barbauld, William Wordsworth, and Mary Shelley

Autorentext

Jenifer Buckley is the author of the articles 'Bankrupt in all but my good wishes: Speculative Economics in Cleomelia; Or The Generous Mistress' in The Journal for Early Modern Cultural Studies (2014), and ''Tis My Father's Fault: Tristram Shandy and Paternal Imagination' in The Male Body in Medicine and Literature (forthcoming, 2017).

Klappentext

'In The Maternal Imagination, Buckley presents significant original evidence of the medical, folkloric, political, and aesthetic roots and occurrences of the trope of maternal imagination in a diverse range of literary genres in the eighteenth century. This comprehensive work is a valuable contribution to the field of eighteenth-century cultural history.' Rebecca Davies, Associate Professor of English Literature, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Norway

This book reveals the cultural significance of the pregnant woman by examining major eighteenth-century debates concerning separate spheres, man-midwifery, performance, marriage, the body, education, and creative imagination. This book explores the medical, economic, moral, and literary ramifications of the notion that a pregnant woman could alter the development of her foetus with the power of her thoughts and feelings. Eighteenth-century authors sought urgently to define, understand and control the concept of maternal imagination as they responded to and provoked fundamental questions about female intellect and the relationship between mind and body. Interrogating the multiple models of maternal imagination both separately and as a holistic set of socio-cultural components, the author uncovers the discourse of maternal imagination across eighteenth-century drama, popular print, medical texts, poetry and novels. This overdue rehabilitation of the pregnant woman in literature is essential reading for scholars of the eighteenth century, gender and literary history.

Inhalt

Chapter 1: Introduction.- Chapter 2: Mary Toft's Performance: Imagining Powerful Pregnancies in Pantomime and Pamphlets.- Chapter 3: "For one would be loath to spoil a son and heir": the Power of Maternal Imagination in Fiction of the Mid Eighteenth-Century.- Chapter 4: ''Tis My Father's Fault': Tristram Shandy and Paternal Imagination.- Chapter 5: "I'll repress the rising anguish/Till thine eyes behold the light": Passionate Responsibility in Maternal Poetry.- Chapter 6: Romantic Imagination and Maternal Guilt in Mary Shelley's Frankenstein.- Afterbirth: The Discourse of Maternal Imagination After the Eighteenth Century.