UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA Los Angeles Literary Gestations: Giving Birth to Writing, 1722-1831 A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree Doctor of Philosophy in English by Elizabeth Ruth Raisanen 2013 © Copyright by Elizabeth Ruth Raisanen 2013 ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION Literary Gestations: Giving Birth to Writing, 1722-1831 by Elizabeth Ruth Raisanen Doctor of Philosophy in English University of California, Los Angeles, 2013 Professor Anne K. Mellor, Chair This study employs a feminist theoretical lens in order to correct the commonplace critical notion that male Romantic poets embraced the metaphors of gestation and birth for their literary productions. By tracing the development of obstetric medicine and copyright law in eighteenth-century England, I demonstrate the ways in which eighteenth-century and Romantic male authors (including Samuel Richardson, Tobias Smollett, Laurence Sterne, William Blake, William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and Percy Shelley) denied autonomy and speech to their pregnant characters and rejected maternal metaphors for writing because they wished to posit a transcendent male mind that was fundamentally different from—and superior to—women’s gross embodiment. I also examine Eliza Haywood, an eighteenth-century novelist who wrote extensively about pregnancy but who nevertheless resisted a maternal authorial ii identity. By contrast, the female Romantic authors I examine in this study—most notably Charlotte Smith, Mary Wollstonecraft, Eliza Fenwick, Amelia Opie, Anna Letitia Barbauld, Isabella Kelly, Jane Cave, and Mary Shelley—celebrated both maternity and maternal metaphors for authorship because motherhood and authorship, embodiment and intellect, were not mutually exclusive for them. In short, mothering and writing were congruent activities for female, but not for male, Romantic writers. iii The dissertation of Elizabeth Ruth Raisanen is approved. Helen Deutsch Mary Terrall Anne K. Mellor, Committee Chair University of California, Los Angeles 2013 iv For my mother, Christine (Ahlskog) Raisanen, whose hard work, sharp intellect, and unfailing kindness I have always endeavored to emulate v TABLE OF CONTENTS List of Illustrations vii Acknowledgments ix Vita xi INTRODUCTION Cultural Constructions of the Pregnant Body in Eighteenth-Century England 1 CHAPTER 1 “Two babes of love close clinging to her waste”: The Perils of Pregnancy and Maternal Authorship in Eliza Haywood’s Fiction 37 CHAPTER 2 “[T]he man-midwife by all means”: Reproductive Authority and Authorship in the Novels of Samuel Richardson, Tobias Smollett, and Laurence Sterne 73 CHAPTER 3 “The imagination bodies forth its conceptions”: Motherhood, Authorship, and Female Romantic Novelists 116 CHAPTER 4 “Say I liv’d to give thee being”: Re-writing the Mother’s Legacy in the Pregnancy Poetry of Jane Cave, Isabella Kelly, and Anna Letitia Barbauld 167 CHAPTER 5 “In my Brain are studies & Chambers”: The Mental Gestations of William Blake, William Wordsworth, and Samuel Taylor Coleridge 219 CHAPTER 6 Hideous Progenies: The Literary Gestations of Percy Shelley and Mary Shelley 288 EPILOGUE 325 APPENDIX 330 BIBLIOGRAPHY 347 vi LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS FIGURE 1 Presentation of Sadler’s Private Looking-Glasse to a pregnant woman 330 FIGURE 2 Fetal positions 331 FIGURE 3 Presentation of Rösslin’s Der Rosengarten to a pregnant woman 332 FIGURE 4 Midwives assisting at a birth 333 FIGURE 5 Mother and fetus 334 FIGURE 6 Placement of fetus in the womb 335 FIGURE 7 Placement of fetus in dissected cadaver 336 FIGURE 8 Forceps delivery 337 FIGURE 9 Delivery of fetal head with a crochet 338 FIGURE 10 Catheter separating the peritoneum from the uterus 339 FIGURE 11 Obstetrical teaching manikin from early nineteenth century 340 FIGURE 12 An exuberant baby extends its arms outward as it is born 341 FIGURE 13 “What is Man!” 342 FIGURE 14 A woman plucks a mandrake-child from beneath a tree 343 vii FIGURE 15 Los gives birth to “the globe of life” 344 FIGURE 16 Mary Shelley’s handwritten emendation of a passage in Frankenstein 345 FIGURE 17 Victor Frankenstein abandons his creature 346 viii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I must begin by offering my heartfelt thanks to the most supportive dissertation committee that a Ph.D. Candidate could desire. I am forever indebted to Anne Mellor for the wisdom, sage advice, and good cheer that have inspired and sustained me throughout the dissertation-writing process. I also had the good fortune to work with Helen Deutsch, who was always ready to offer constructive, insightful feedback to me when I needed it the most. I deeply appreciate the detailed comments I received from Mary Terrall, who generously shared her extensive knowledge of the history of obstetric medicine with me, and from Felicity Nussbaum, whose incisive critiques helped me to shape my project in significant ways. I am also grateful to those teachers whose expertise and enthusiasm guided me on the path to graduate school. I wish to thank Dana Brookins, whose literature classes inspired me to major in English, as well as Ray Ventre and the faculty of the English Department at Northern Michigan University, who made me realize that I wanted to enter their profession. I am particularly grateful to Alex Dick for his invaluable mentorship and for the undergraduate Romantics class that captured my imagination. I would also like to thank Jeff Cox, who taught the graduate seminar in which the contours of my dissertation project first began to take shape. For permission to reprint illustrative material, I thank the Library Special Collections at UCLA, the Pierpont Morgan Library, the William Blake Archive, and the Library of Congress. I would also like to acknowledge the Chawton House Library, the UCLA Center for the Study of Women, the UCLA Center for European and Eurasian Studies, the UCLA Center for Seventeenth- and Eighteenth-Century Studies, the UCLA Department of English, and UCLA’s Graduate Division for generous research and conference travel grants that have helped to foster my dissertation work and professional development. Mike Lambert, Jeanette Gilkison, Rick ix Fagin, Janel Munguia, and Nora Elias deserve special thanks for their unfailing professionalism, patience, and expert assistance in all administrative matters relating to the UCLA Department of English. My years in graduate school have given me the gift of numerous colleagues and friends who have supported and encouraged me with their humor and insight. Noah Comet, Noelle Chao, Beth Goodhue, Vivian Davis, Val Shepard, and Fred Burwick were generous and knowledgeable mentors to me during my time at UCLA. Enit Steiner graciously helped me to hone my German language skills and was always willing to lend a listening ear. Kristin Yarris has been a valuable long-distance writing partner and font of professional wisdom. Words cannot express my gratitude to Chris Mott for mentoring me in the craft of teaching. I wish to extend special thanks to another amazing and compassionate mentor, Angela Deaver Campbell, as well as to my colleagues (and dear friends) at the UCLA Scholarship Resource Center—Hannah Lee, Kat Webster, Hannah Nahm, Francesca Marx, Mac Harris, and Elena Shih—for the good company and conversation that have kept my spirits up during the final stretch of dissertation writing. I am also grateful to Sara Torres, Emily Runde, Whitney Arnold, Cait Rohn, Vicki Joule, Michelle Bradley, Jackie Ellisor, and Cecilia Pang, who have offered me their friendship and support during both joyful and difficult times. On a personal note, I would like to thank my parents, Ken and Christine Raisanen, my brother Daniel Raisanen, my grandparents Ruth Ahlskog and Eddie and Irene Raisanen, my honorary grandmother Helen Toivonen, and my second family—Tom, Sandi, and Brian Gauthier—for their many years of generous assistance and loving encouragement. Finally, I owe a deep debt of gratitude to my husband, Todd Gauthier, for the immeasurable love, wisdom, patience, and generosity that have never failed to sustain me. x VITA 2003 B.A., English Summa cum laude Northern Michigan University 2004 Graduate Part-Time Instructor Department of English University of Colorado at Boulder 2005 M.A., English University of Colorado at Boulder 2006-2007 Teaching Assistant Department of English University of California, Los Angeles 2007-2008 Graduate Research Mentorship Fellowship Graduate Division University of California, Los Angeles 2008-2010 Teaching Assistant Department of English University of California, Los Angeles 2009 Thayer Short-Term Research Fellowship Library Special Collections University of California, Los Angeles 2010 Jean Stone Dissertation Research Fellowship Center for the Study of Women University of California, Los Angeles 2010-2011 Dissertation Research Fellowship Department of English University of California, Los Angeles 2011-2012 Dissertation Fellowship Graduate Division University of California, Los Angeles 2011-2013 Student Affairs Advisor Scholarship Resource Center University of California, Los Angeles xi PUBLICATIONS AND PRESENTATIONS Elizabeth Ruth Raisanen. “‘A Play without Love’?: Ann Yearsley’s Earl Goodwin.” Paper presented at the Comparative Literature Conference, California State University, Long Beach, March 2006. ---. “Post-Napoleonic Liberal Discourse in Mary Mitford’s Rienzi.” Paper presented at the North American Society for the Study of Romanticism Conference, Bristol, UK, July 2007. ---. “Mary Russell Mitford’s Julian.” Paper presented at the Wordsworth Summer