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Reproduction and the Literary Imagination in the Eighteenth Century Northumbria Research Link Citation: Blackwood, Ashleigh (2017) Managing maternity: Reproduction and the literary imagination in the eighteenth century. Doctoral thesis, Northumbria University. This version was downloaded from Northumbria Research Link: http://nrl.northumbria.ac.uk/id/eprint/36273/ Northumbria University has developed Northumbria Research Link (NRL) to enable users to access the University’s research output. Copyright © and moral rights for items on NRL are retained by the individual author(s) and/or other copyright owners. Single copies of full items can be reproduced, displayed or performed, and given to third parties in any format or medium for personal research or study, educational, or not-for-profit purposes without prior permission or charge, provided the authors, title and full bibliographic details are given, as well as a hyperlink and/or URL to the original metadata page. The content must not be changed in any way. Full items must not be sold commercially in any format or medium without formal permission of the copyright holder. The full policy is available online: http://nrl.northumbria.ac.uk/policies.html Managing Maternity: Reproduction and the Literary Imagination in the Eighteenth Century A. Blackwood PhD 2017 Managing Maternity: Reproduction and the Literary Imagination in the Eighteenth Century Managing Maternity: Reproduction and the Literary Imagination in the Eighteenth Century Ashleigh Blackwood, MRes B.A. (Hons) A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements of the University of Northumbria at Newcastle for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Research undertaken in the Faculty of Arts, Design & Social Sciences October 2017 Page 2 of 396 Managing Maternity: Reproduction and the Literary Imagination in the Eighteenth Century Managing Maternity: Reproduction and the Literary Imagination in the Eighteenth Century This thesis demonstrates how literary and medical authors explored changing concepts of childbirth and reproductive medicine between the years 1737 and 1798. Considerable changes took place during this period that transformed birth from a social rite of passage into a medical event. Questions such as who and what was involved in reproduction, how childbirth was managed by individuals and communities, as well as how common understanding about these matters were reached, were brought to the fore in a way that they had never before been raised. A key means by which these ideas were communicated was through the rapidly developing print market with its overlapping interests in literature and medicine. Scholarship of medical humanities and medical history has grown exponentially in the last few decades, including that relating to the history of midwifery and the professionalization of what would become obstetric discourse, yet no study has brought together the theme of reproduction with trends in medical and literary publishing directly. The methodology employed here favours neither the literary nor historical, nor the feminist over the biographical, but rather brings these approaches together, drawing on medical theory of the period, trends in publishing, the rise of both women’s writing and the novel, as the texts considered require. The thesis widens the source pool consulted for purposes of developing a detailed understanding of the history of reproductive medicine. In doing so, the materials analysed reveal that both lay and professional authors found a range of creative ways of relating to changes in the medical management of pregnancy and childbirth, using personal stories and broader medical information, some of this illicit. Page 3 of 396 Managing Maternity: Reproduction and the Literary Imagination in the Eighteenth Century Contents Abstract Acknowledgments Declaration Introduction p.11 Maternity, Medicine and Literary Creativity Methodology and the Question of [Inter]Disciplinarity p.13 Defining Maternity p.20 Critical Scholarship: The History of Midwifery Practice and Writing 1540-1799 p.23 Critical Scholarship: Creating and Procreating Literature and Maternity p.48 Chapter Summary p.54 PART ONE Chapter One 1. p.59 Breeding Books: Readers and Writers of Reproductive Medical Literature Introduction p.59 Writing for a Readership: Female Midwives p.60 Writing for a Readership: Male Medical Practitioners and the Development of p.63 Reproductive Medical Publishing Writing for a Readership: Literacy and Access to Reading for Stakeholders of p.73 Reproductive Medicine Conclusion p.86 Chapter Two 2. p.88 Early Women’s Medical Authorship in Print Introduction p.88 ‘The Woman Physician’: Mary Trye p.90 Authors of Almanacs p.91 ‘The Popish Midwife’: Elizabeth Cellier p.95 ‘A Curious Herbal’: Elizabeth Blackwell p.104 Page 4 of 396 Managing Maternity: Reproduction and the Literary Imagination in the Eighteenth Century Conclusion p.112 Chapter Three 3. p.114 ‘To take up the pen for public perusal’: Narrative and Metadiscourse in Women’s Reproductive Writing Introduction p.114 The Literary Midwife: Sarah Stone p.119 The Polemical Practitioner: Elizabeth Nihell p.128 A ‘Teacher of Midwifery’: Margaret Stephen p.138 ‘Take Nature’s Path’: Martha Mears p.144 The Forgotten Author: Mrs. Wright p.147 Conclusion p.153 PART TWO 4. Chapter Four p.157 ‘I wish the child, I call my own’: [Pro]Creative Experience in the Poetry of Jane Cave Winscom Introduction p.157 Recovering Winscom Scholarship p.159 Birth in Poems on Various Subjects p.161 ‘Written a few Hours before the Birth of a Child’ p.164 Winscom and Religious Faith p.166 Birthing Risks and Mortality p.172 Personal Hopes and Fears p.176 Conclusion p.179 5. Chapter Five p.181 ‘Slow steps of casual increase’: Laurence Sterne and Social Anxieties of Reproduction Introduction p.181 Delivering Novel Births p.184 Problem Births p.187 Page 5 of 396 Managing Maternity: Reproduction and the Literary Imagination in the Eighteenth Century Birthing Tristram’s Narrative p.203 Conclusion p.208 PART THREE Chapter Six p.211 Abortifacients in Eighteenth-Century Medical Literature Introduction p.211 The Challenge of Abortion History p.212 Ways and Means p.217 Abortion in Public Discourse p.220 Medical Contributions p.223 Conclusions p.226 Chapter Seven p.229 'The Dreadful Potion': Abortion in the Eighteenth-Century Novel Introduction p.229 Addressing Abortion and Agency in Literary Fiction p.230 A Vindication of the Neglected Woman p.236 ‘Morbid’ Maternity p.246 ‘Pourtray[ing] Passions’ p.249 Conclusion p.255 Thesis Conclusion p.258 Appendix A p.268 Obstetric Publishing in the British Isles Catalogue, 1540-1799 Bibliography p.373 Page 6 of 396 Managing Maternity: Reproduction and the Literary Imagination in the Eighteenth Century List of Visual Representations: Figures, Tables and Graphs Figure One Culpeper’s sketch of the unborn foetus during a dissection, p.65 from Directory for Midwives (1651) Table One Obstetric Texts published between 1650 and 1799 p.66 Graph One Total number of texts published (including new editions and p.67 reprints) Graph Two Total number of reproductive medical publications compared p.68 to the number of original texts Figures Two Mary Holden, The Woman’s Almanack, For the Year of our p.93 and Three Lord, 1688. Mary Holden, The Woman’s Almanack, or, An Ephemeris for the Year of our Lord, 1689. Figure Four Thomas Rowlandson, ‘Yorick Feeling the Grisset's Pulse’ p.191 (1808) Page 7 of 396 Managing Maternity: Reproduction and the Literary Imagination in the Eighteenth Century Declaration I declare that the work contained in this thesis has not been submitted for any other award and that it is all my own work. I also confirm that this work fully acknowledges opinions, ideas and contributions from the work of others. I acknowledge the role played by my association with a major funded project conducted by Northumbria University and Newcastle University, ‘Fashionable Diseases: Medicine, Literature and Culture 1660-1832’ (1st February 2013 – 31st May 2016) in the production of this research. Chapters Four and Five of this thesis have appeared as the following publications, those versions which appear here have been reworked for purposes of the larger arguments of this thesis: Ashleigh Blackwood, ‘“I wish the child, I call my own”: [Pro]Creative Experience in Eighteenth-Century Poetry’, Voice and Context in Eighteenth-Century Verse: Order in Variety, ed. Joanna Fowler and Allan Ingram (Palgrave Macmillan, 2015) pp.155-172. ———, 'Sterne's “Little Gentleman”: Tristram Shandy and the Male Participant in Childbirth', Sterne, Tristram, Yorick: Tercentenary Essays on Laurence Sterne, ed. Melvyn New, Peter de Voogd, Judith Hawley (Delaware University Press, 2015) pp.101-120. A further publication of my own is not included here, but makes reference to of one of the midwifery case studies used in Chapter Three and throughout this thesis: ———, ‘Toxic Texts and Reading Remedies: Literary Medicine in Eighteenth-Century Print Cultures’, Literature and Medicine, Volume 34, No. 2 (Fall 2016) pp.278-98. Any ethical clearance for the research presented in this thesis has been approved. Approval has been sought and granted by the Faculty Ethics Committee on 17th January 2013. I declare that the Word Count of this Thesis is 84, 871 words Name: Ashleigh Blackwood Signature: Date: 27th October 2017 Page 8 of 396 Managing Maternity: Reproduction and the Literary Imagination in the Eighteenth Century Acknowledgments The best thing about universities is the opportunity for interaction with large numbers of truly wonderful people. During my time as a student and the part of my career spent working in higher education there have been a substantial number of people in both my personal and professional life who have contributed, both knowingly and unknowingly, to my ability to complete this thesis. Northumbria University provided Faculty Scholarships for my postgraduate taught year and my postgraduate research enrolment, for which I am truly grateful. As the University’s part-time contribution to the Leverhulme-funded project ‘Fashionable Diseases: Medicine, Literature and Culture 1660-1832’, I can only hope that my research has been a good investment.
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