Summer 2016 Pregnancy Special Issue
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Women’s History The journal of the Women’s History Network Pregnancy Special Issue Summer 2016 Articles by Katarzyna Bronk, Sara Read, Hannah Charnock, Chelsea Phillips, Emma O’Toole Plus Eight book reviews Getting to know each other Committee news Calls for Review Volume 2 Issue 5 ISSN 2059-0164 www.womenshistorynetwork.org The Women’s History Network Annual Conference 2016 Women’s Material Cultures/Women’s Material Environments Friday 16 September – Saturday 17 September 2016 Leeds Trinity University In September 2016, Leeds Trinity University is honoured to be hosting the 25th annual Women’s History Network conference on the theme of Women’s Material Cultures and Environments. We are delighted to welcome Dr Jane Hamlett, Professor Yosanne Vella and Kitty Ross as keynote speakers. For more information and to book your place, please visit whn2016.wordpress.com [email protected] @whn2016 IMAGE CREDIT: ‘In the Studio’ painting of the Academie Julien in Paris, 1881, by Marie Bashkirtseff (1858 – 1884), held at Dnipropetrovsk State Art Museum, online at: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Bashkirtseff_-_In_the_Studio.jpg Editorial elcome to the Summer 2016 issue of Women’s History, a discussion of reproduction and pregnancy that stretched Wspecial issue on pregnancy guest edited by Jennifer Evans not only across historical fields and approaches but across and Ciara Meehan of the University of Hertfordshire. Women’s disciplines. From these rather humble, and quite likely History is the journal of the Women’s History Network and unfounded gripes, developed the ‘Perceptions of Pregnancy: we invite articles on any aspect of women’s history. If you are from the Medieval to the Modern’ conference, held at the inspired by this themed edition, we would also be interested University of Hertfordshire in 2014. to talk to you about your suggestion for future special issues. The conference lived up to, and vastly exceeded, our expectations as art historians, historians, journalists, literary Editorial Team: Jane Berney, Lucy Bland, Rosalind Carr, scholars, political geographers, and psychologists from around Catherine Lee, Naomi Pullin, Rachel Rich the world came together to discuss abortion, conception, contraception, miscarriage, pregnancy and parturition in Introduction different eras and countries. The conference allowed us to Jennifer Evans and Ciara Meehan (University of Hertfordshire) start to see the ways in which women’s, and men’s, experiences of reproduction have changed over time and space, and the I am a young Gentlewoman of a considerable ways in which they were, and in some cases are, marked by Fortune, my Father and Mother both living; I was continuity and familiarity. promis’d Marriage by a Gentleman, to whom by Early modern scholars have tended to consider either much persuasion I granted his Desires, and it infertility or miscarriage separately from pregnancy and birth. happen’d I found my self with child: I continually Numerous scholars have considered the importance of fertility desir’d him to perform his Promise, but he and conception to early modern society and have recently slighted me. And now there is a Gentleman come to consider in more detail the place of men in these whom I could freely love, courts me; but being discussions.3 However, these discussions have rarely included in this condition, am unwilling to deceive him: discussions of miscarriage – which in early modern thought and my Father and he desires me to settle my Affection, and the other Gentleman always upbraids me of my Sin with him; so I fear he will Contents not only make a discovery, but render me odious to the World. What course would you advise me Editorial ............................................................................3 The Women’s History Network to take?1 From one father to another: William Cobbett’s So read the familiar story in an eighteenth-century reprint of advice on motherhood and maternity .....................5 Annual Conference 2016 a popular seventeenth-century weekly question and answer “‘Thanksgiving after Twice Miscarrying’: Divine paper the Athenian Mercury. This publication, designed for Will, Women, and Miscarriage in Early Modern widespread popular consumption, spoke to the concerns of England” ...................................................................11 early modern men and women. Yet the plight of this unmarried “This Haunting Sadness”: Press coverage of John Women’s Material Cultures/Women’s Material Environments girl who had found herself pregnant and unable to move Corrie’s Abortion (Amendment) Bill, 1979-1980 ..16 without hindrance into a suitable marriage resonates across Mrs. Pickle’s mistake: the origins of an eighteenth- the centuries. Indeed in 1960s Ireland another advice column century satirical print ..............................................23 recounted, Book Reviews .................................................................33 Committee News ............................................................40 When I told my boyfriend that I was pregnant, BOOKS RECEIVED AND CALL FOR REVIEWERS .......41 he said that the only thing to do was to get an Getting to Know Each Other .........................................42 Friday 16 September – Saturday 17 September 2016 abortion. At first I was shocked and horrified, but now I am beginning to come round to his Leeds Trinity University way of thinking. Anything would be better than having to tell my mother.2 Cover: Woman pregnant Experiencing an unplanned pregnancy, and without an offer with nine or eleven of marriage from her boyfriend and fearing the judgement of babies, described by In September 2016, Leeds Trinity University is honoured to be hosting the 25th her family, this young woman, just like the unmarried girl who Ambroise Pare after annual Women’s History Network conference on the theme of Women’s Material had turned to Athenian Mercury, found herself in a desperate Francesco Pico della Cultures and Environments. We are delighted to welcome Dr Jane Hamlett, situation. The comparable position of these two women Mirandola. Professor Yosanne Vella and Kitty Ross as keynote speakers. – contravening societal conventions and expectations by becoming pregnant outside marriage – in radically different Credit Wellcome Library, historical contexts spoke loudly to us as we talked about our London, available under research into women’s lives when we first began working http://creativecommons. together at the University of Hertfordshire in 2013. From org/licenses/by/4.0/ these initial discussions about the ways in which women’s reproductive lives had been a core element of popular advice For more information and to book your place, please visit whn2016.wordpress.com literature and magazines we came to question more and more ways in which we were often confined in our thinking by time period and geographical location. Increasingly we [email protected] @whn2016 felt frustrated that there was not a forum dedicated to the Editorial Women’s History 5, Summer 2016 3 IMAGE CREDIT: ‘In the Studio’ painting of the Academie Julien in Paris, 1881, by Marie Bashkirtseff (1858 – 1884), held at Dnipropetrovsk State Art Museum, online at: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Bashkirtseff_-_In_the_Studio.jpg was considered a type of barrenness if it reoccurred frequently. and to underscore the potential disarray that resulted from Instead a separate body of literature has considered the place female promiscuity. Chelsea’s piece also picks up on the ways of miscarriage in early modern society, which has, for example, in which the pregnant body was costumed, a theme expanded thought about the ways in which narratives of miscarriage upon in Emma O’Toole’s discussion of Irish eighteenth and could be deployed to underscore expected gender relations.4 nineteenth-century maternity wear. Work on pregnancy and birth often acknowledges that these The second theme that emerged was the ways in which were precarious months for the mother but there remains an fertility, birth control, and pregnancy have shifted between apparent lack of work connecting pregnancy with miscarriage, medical and consumer discourses with participants variously and parturition with stillbirth.5 described as either patients or consumers. This theme is Studies of the modern period have followed something addressed less explicitly in the papers presented here, but of a similar pattern. Explorations of abortion, for example, have Katarzyna Bronk’s consideration of William Cobbett’s (1763 − focussed mostly on the political debate rather than the bodily 1835) musings on parenthood, show that fathers, to his way experience. Women feature as part of the analysis in either the of thinking, should act partly as savvy consumers carefully role of activist or politician, but rarely as the pregnant women selecting a wife that would best suit a maternal role. whose bodies are at the centre of the debate.6 Furthermore, in We hope that you will enjoy reading the pieces gathered the case of Britain, the period after the Abortion Act, 1967, has for this special issue. They provide a flavour of the vibrant and been considerably under-researched compared to that pre- exciting research being pursued in a range of disciplines that legislation.7 The study of fatherhood has also been overlooked illuminates our understanding about women’s experiences in the historiography in favour of motherhood, marriage and of these important bodily functions in the past. The chapters the home.8 We concluded