Untenanted Lives: Involuntary Childlessness in Nineteenth

Untenanted Lives: Involuntary Childlessness in Nineteenth-Century America Morwenna I. R. Chaffe Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) in American Studies 2017 This copy of the thesis has been supplied on condition that anyone who consults it is understood to recognise that its copyright rests with the author and that use of any information derived there from must be in accordance with current UK Copyright Law. In addition, any quotation or extract must include full attribution. 2 Abstract As the expectation for married women to become mothers took on a new importance in nineteenth-century America, the relationship between mother and child was constantly exalted not only in the abundance of prescriptive literature, but also by the medical profession. The discourses of true womanhood and motherhood expressed by physicians and social commentators dictated much of the culturally condoned behaviour and everyday life of middle- class women. This thesis asks how involuntarily childless women embodied their roles in society as the ideal of true womanhood became so strongly characterised by motherhood. Through an interdisciplinary methodology that combines the analysis of archival sources with readings of fictional texts, memoirs and biographies, embedded within histories of a variety of social phenomena – nineteenth-century gynaecology, invalidism, mourning, adoption, and divorce – this thesis provides a socio-cultural analysis of gender and intimacy in late nineteenth-century America. It also examines the various means by which childless women filled their lives, carving out alternative means of existence in a socially prescribed environment of parenthood. The involuntarily childless women considered in this thesis found ways to tenant their lives in the absence of longed-for children. From theatrical performance to adoption, education to art, and from the strengthening of marital relations to their demise, this thesis explores the actions these women took in their marriages to negotiate their identities as childless individuals in a culture of motherhood. 3 List of Contents Acknowledgements 5 Introduction Discourses of the Childless Body 6 1. “The climax of your happiness”: Childlessness in the Era of True Womanhood 22 2. “Doctors and patients alike have womb on the brain”: Medical Approaches to Women’s Health 40 3. “Artful misrepresentations”: The Performance of Maternity by Childless Women 69 4. “It is all in God’s hands and he does not willingly afflict us”: Reaffirming Family Ties After Perinatal Loss 97 5. “House of the expanding doors”: The Creation of Alternative Families 121 6. “Germs of Discontent”: Till Death (or Divorce) Them Do Part 144 Conclusion 173 Archival Resources 178 Bibliography 179 4 Illustrations Fig. 1. “Lydia Maria Child”, Photograph, 14.9 x 10.1 cm. Massachusetts Historical Society. 6 Fig. 2. “Half hidden by a bouquet of laughing young faces”, Frontispiece to Louisa May Alcott, Little Men (1871; Boston: Little, Brown, and Company, 1901). 37 Fig. 3. “Beth with her head in Jo’s lap”, Illustration. Louisa May Alcott, Little Women (1868; Little, Brown and Company, 1916). 44 Fig. 4. “Water Cure Treatments”, Illustration. Joel Shew, Hydropathy; or the Water Cure: Its Principles, Modes of Treatment, 1844. 64 Fig. 5. “Clara Morris”, Photograph by George G. Rockwood, 1870s. 76 Fig. 6. “James Lee Love”, Photograph, late 1880s. University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. 114 Fig. 7. “Julia Love Spencer and her daughter Cornelia”, Photograph, 1899. University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. 117 Fig. 8. “Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie”, Engraving by John Chester Buttre, 1845. The New York Public Library Digital Collections. 137 Fig. 9. “Mary Sheldon Barnes and Earl Barnes”, Photograph, 1897. Stanford University Libraries. 158 Fig. 10. Extract from a letter, Mary Sheldon Barnes to Earl Barnes. Photograph taken by author. Sophia Smith Collection. 159 Fig. 11. “Possum, Marquis and Boojum”, Photograph by Clover Adams, 1883. Massachusetts Historical Society. 166 Fig. 12. “Mrs. Howe, Mrs. Pratt and Alice Pratt on rocks at Smith’s Point”, Photograph by Clover Adams, 1883. Massachusetts Historical Society. 170 5 Acknowledgments Research for this thesis was made possible in part from the generous funding of the UEA School of American Studies Postgraduate Research Studentship, the Abraham Lincoln Award from the British Association of American Studies, the Peter J. Parish Memorial Fund, and the Royal Historical Society. I am also indebted to my supervisors, Becky Fraser and Hilary Emmett, who have guided me throughout this process with their insight and encouragement. They have devoted much time to reading various versions of the chapters as they took shape, and their feedback has pushed my analyses. I would also like to thank Sarah Garland who was kind enough to act as a substitute supervisor while Hilary was on maternity leave. My friends have been an essential support network for me during my time in Norwich. They have helped me grow both as an academic and as an adult. Bradley James has kept me supplied with cups of tea and entertained my very energetic dog so that I could write in peace. Hannah Yelin has been there to pick me up when days were hard, and celebrate with me when there were joys to be shared. I value the many rich conversations I have had with Bradley and Hannah, as well as my fellow American Studies peers and friends. I would also like to thank David Schulte for reminding me that there is a world waiting to be explored outside of the PhD. Finally, I owe my deepest thanks to my parents, Paul Chaffe and Kim Sloan, without whom this dissertation would not exist. My father has been there to listen when I have needed him and has always known when to avoid asking the dreaded question: “So, how is the writing going?” My mother has shown not only immense faith in me, but also an invaluable amount of patience. Through her devotion to her family and her career she has become the role model for my womanhood. 6 Introduction Discourses of the Childless Body Fig. 1. Portrait of Lydia Maria Child (1802-1880). In 1839, eleven years into her childless marriage, moral reformer and author, Lydia Maria Child wrote to her friends: “I never felt so forcibly as within the last year, that to a childless wife, ‘life is almost untenanted.’”1 Through the seemingly simple term “untenanted,” Child’s letter evoked the absence, emptiness, and loss that she felt as an involuntarily childless woman. Her desire for children was evident from early on in her marriage. In a letter to her mother-in- law, Child had proclaimed: “I do wish I would be a mother, and that even more for husband’s sake than for my own. But God’s will be done. I am certain that Divine Providence orders all things for our good.”2 Child’s sense that as a wife and a nineteenth-century woman it was her duty to become a mother is palpable here; but more than this, although she resigned herself to 1 Lydia Maria Child to Louisa (Gilman) Loring and Ellis Gray Loring, 30 April 1839, in The Empty Cradle: Infertility in America from Colonial Times to the Present, Margaret Marsh and Wanda Ronner (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996), 35. 2 Lydia Maria Child to Lydia (Bigelow) Child, 23 June 1831 in “Motherhood Denied: Women and Infertility in Historical Perspective,” Margaret Marsh, in Mothers and Motherhood: Readings in American History, eds., Apple, Rima D. and Janet Golden (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1997), 224. 7 the will of God, the conspicuous emptiness that the description of an almost “untenanted” life evokes suggests that the loss and sorrow Child felt in relation to her lack of children was never assuaged. While the image of the “angel in the house” flanked by her cherubic children reigns dominant in our stereotypes of nineteenth-century American women, Child offers us an insight into the experiences of those women for whom this ideal was inaccessible.3 Although Child defined her life without children in this rather bleak manner, she was able to partake in and contribute to society in a number of profound ways. As well as being an author, she was an active abolitionist. Poet John Greenleaf Whittier, author of the biographical introduction to Child’s collected letters, wrote of the many causes in which she was involved that: “Peace, temperance, education, prison reform, and equality of civil rights, irrespective of sex, engaged her attention.” Speaking of her continuous works of charity he informed the reader of her collected letters that: “Whether in the crowded city among the sin-sick and starving, or among the poor and afflicted of the neighborhood of her country home, no story of suffering and need, capable of alleviation, ever reached her without immediate sympathy and corresponding action.”4 Through her work as an author and social reformer, Child became the financial provider for herself and her somewhat idealist husband, David Child. He often performed his role as a lawyer for free, gave away much of the money he earned to those in need whom he encountered, and it was said that his “sense of business was about equal to ‘cutting stones with a razor.’”5 David, like Child, was compassionate and intellectually stimulating; however, as he aged, Child spent much of her time caring for David in their country home. Of her continuous dedication to and support for him, Child humorously declared that: “my good David serves me for husband and ‘baby and all.’”6 Humour aside, Child, and the other nineteenth-century American women considered in this thesis did find ways to fill their lives in the absence of longed for children. From theatrical performance to adoption, education to art, and from the strengthening of marital relations to their demise, this thesis explores the actions these women took in their marriages to negotiate their identities as childless individuals in a culture of motherhood.

Load more