Deliver Me: Pregnancy, Birth, and the Body in the British Novel, 1900-1950
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
DELIVER ME: PREGNANCY, BIRTH, AND THE BODY IN THE BRITISH NOVEL, 1900-1950 BY ERIN M. KINGSLEY B.A., George Fox University, 2001 M.A., University of Colorado at Denver, 2006 A thesis submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate School of the University of Colorado in partial fulfillment of the requirement for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Department of English 2014 This thesis, entitled: Deliver Me: Pregnancy, Birth, and the Body in the British Novel, 1900-1950 written by Erin M. Kingsley has been approved for the Department of English _______________________________________ Jane Garrity, Committee Chair _______________________________________ Laura Winkiel, Committee Member Date:_______________ The final copy of this thesis has been examined by the signatories, and we find that both the content and the form meet acceptable presentation standards of scholarly work in the above mentioned discipline. HRC protocol #__________________ iii ABSTRACT Kingsley, Erin (Ph.D., English, English Department) Deliver Me: Pregnancy, Birth, and the Body in the British Novel, 1900-1950 Thesis directed by Associate Professor Jane Garrity Deliver Me: Pregnancy, Birth, and the Body in the British Novel, 1900-1950 explores three ways British novels engage with the rise of the “culture of pregnancy,” an extreme interest in reproduction occurring during the modernist movement. This culture of pregnancy was intimately facilitated by the joint explosion of dailies and periodicals and the rise of “experts,” ranging from doctors presiding over the birthing chamber to self-help books dictating how women should control their birth-giving. In response to this culture of pregnancy, some modernist writers portray the feminine reproductive body as a suffering entity that can be saved by an alignment with traditionally- coded masculine aspects of the mind. Analyzing Virginia Woolf’s Orlando (1928), A Room of One’s Own (1929), and Three Guineas (1938); Enid Bagnold’s The Squire (1938); and Naomi Mitchison’s We Have Been Warned (1936), I argue that these writers encoded a “bloodless” model of reproduction in their texts, injecting the feminine body with a healthy dose of masculinity by wresting reproductive processes out of the physical domain and relocating them in the mental. The second dominant literary response to the culture of pregnancy was concerned with the burgeoning presence of “improper” births by racialized women. Texts like Voyage in the Dark (1934) and Good Morning, Midnight (1939) by Jean Rhys, and Spleen (1930) by Olive Moore are thus highly engaged in issues of reproductive power(lessness) at the intersections of race, class, and cultural displacement. iv Finally, the third response occurs in science fiction texts that seek to ameliorate the transgressive female body by repairing it via the masculine scientific gaze. Charlotte Haldane’s Man’s World (1926), Susan Ertz’s Woman Alive (1936), Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World (1937), and Katharine Burdekin’s Swastika Night (1937) portray scientific reproduction as a critical project to rescue humanity from the female body, rooted as it is in uncontrollable fluctuations. These modernist novels imagine alternative worlds, yet they remain worlds in which the female reproductive problem is at the center. For these reasons, pregnancy in modernism must be reconceptualized as a primary modality of modernism itself and a central tenet of the movement. v ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I have always seen this part of the dissertation as taking a victory lap of sorts, and I’m still not quite ready to do that. Surely there must be one more edit to make, one more wayward source to plug in. In the spirit of knowing that a work of writing is never complete, I will keep my thanks brief; however, please know that they are heartfelt. To my dissertation director, Jane Garrity: thank you for your sustained guidance and good humor, insightful comments and helpful questions, timely responses and meticulous revisions. My path here at University of Colorado would be bleak without you. To my dissertation committee members: Karen Jacobs, Laura Winkiel, Janice Ho, and Deepti Misri. Your graceful inquiries and kind suggestions helped shape this project at a fundamental level. Thanks to Laura for your continued edits that were beyond thorough; Karen, for introducing me to ideas of spatiality and bodies, and always serving as a gracious sounding board; Janice, for your excellent suggestion of including science fiction texts and your detailed revisions; and Deepti, for an introduction to all things feminist. To the wonderful folks at the Division of Continuing Education, especially Geoffrey Rubenstein and my friend Teresa Nugent. The two-year Digital Pedagogy Grant allowed me precious time at home with my young children, saving me the rigorous commute to campus and affording me enough time and mental capacity to finish this dissertation in a timely manner. There is no way I could have finished this degree so quickly without the gift of teaching online. For that gift, I am grateful to you all beyond words. To my dear friend Shannon, a sister working in the trenches beside me all these years. God gave me a priceless gift when he threw us together. vi To my mom, Arlene, for always believing in me (beyond measure), and to my dad, Randy, for the same. And, oh, the Mini Cooper also helped in the commute to campus. Thank you is not quite sufficient for these extraordinary gifts. To my sister Amy and brother-in-law Justin, for all those days you cheerfully gave me childcare, ice cream, meals, and mental and emotional support. Again, “thank you” can never suffice. To my children, Sylvia and Lucas: you have done everything in your power to make sure I did not finish this. No, that’s not entirely true. Sylvia, you have been incredible in giving mommy “space” when she is working. I’m sorry you have had to grow up so quickly in this capacity, but I’m grateful that you both have known at an early age that our little family revolves around 1) Jesus and 2) books. I do it all for you, my littles. To my husband, Matthew: for delivering coffee to me each morning as I wrote, and for the gazillion hours that you single-parented it, taking the kids to the park and guarding the closed door of our bedroom so I could keep working. This birth belongs to us both. vii CONTENTS INTRODUCTION: THE FEMALE BODY AND THE TEXT ......................................................1 CHAPTER I. THE (HI)STORY OF BRITISH BIRTH AND THE RISE OF A TWENTIETH CENTURY CULTURE OF PREGNANCY......................................................................20 CHAPTER II. BLOODLESS BIRTH: REPRODUCTION AND THE MASCULINE MIND.........................................................................................................85 CHAPTER III. THE FEMININE BODY: BIRTH-GIVING AND THE RACIALIZED OTHER ...................................................................................................144 CHAPTER IV. FLESH AND STEEL: DYSTOPIC FEMALE REPRODUCTION AND THE AMELIORATIVE SCIENTIFIC GAZE.......................................................187 CODA: BEYOND MODERNIST BIRTH ..................................................................................241 BIBLIOGRAPHY........................................................................................................................250 APPENDIX A: TIME MAGAZINE COVER, OCTOBER 4, 2010............................................273 APPENDIX B: “MAURICE” MATERNITY CLOTHES AD, JUNE 7, 1916...........................274 1 INTRODUCTION THE FEMALE BODY AND THE TEXT “Whether figured as a death or a heroic rebirth, childbirth is, however, always a turning-point, a narrative crisis that destroys, confirms or creates a woman’s sense of identity.” ~ Tess Cosslett , Women Writing Childbirth 1 “If one believes, as many feminists do, that the woman as gestating mother is a subject position of peculiar potency, then one must view with alarm any threat to that unique and powerful identity.” ~ Margrit Schildrick , Leaky Bodies and Boundaries 2 Mina Loy’s “Parturition,” first published in Trend in 1914, is widely considered to be the first poem to explore pregnancy from the pregnant subject’s point of view. 3 This astounding text breaks and molds its form to the contours of the shuddering breath and rending flesh that occurs in the poem’s titular experience, echoing childbirth in form as well as in content and in sound: I am the centre Of a circle of pain Exceeding its boundaries in every direction … Locate an irritation without It is within Within It is without The sensitized area Is identical with the extensity Of intension. (1-3; 11-17) 4 1 Cosslett, Tess. Women Writing Childbirth: Modern Discourses of Motherhood . Manchester: Manchester UP, 1994. 154. 2 Schildrick, Margrit. Leaky Bodies and Boundaries: Feminism, Postmodernism and (Bio)ethics . London and New York: Routledge, 1997. 203. 3 This is a generally-accepted assertion, but for explicit articulation, see Prescott, Tara. “Moths and Mothers: Mina Loy’s ‘Parturition.’” Women’s Studies 39.3 (2010): 194-214. 4 Loy, Mina. “Parturition.” The Lost Lunar Baedeker Poems . Ed. Roger L. Conover. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1996. 4-8. For notable recent criticism of “Parturition,” in addition to Tara Prescott, see Laura Winkiel, Modernism, Race and Manifestoes (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2008), especially pgs. 112-120; Rachel 2 Throughout the poem, the speaker expressly grapples with what it means, physically and psychologically, to be both a modern (new) and a birthing (old / traditional)