Dangerous motherhood : insanity and childbirth in Victorian Britain / Hilary Marland

Annotation Dangerous Motherhood is the first study of the close and complex relationship between mental disorder and childbirth. Exploring the relationship between women, their families and their doctors reveals how explanations for the onset of puerperal insanity were drawn from a broad set of moral, social and environmental frameworks, rather than being bound to ideas that women as a whole were likely to be vulnerable to mental illness. The horror of this devastating disorder which upturned the household, turned gentle mothers into disruptive and dangerous mad women, was magnified by it occurring at a time when it was anticipated that women would be most happy in the fulfillment of their role as mothers Dangerous Motherhood is the first study of the close and complex relationship between mental disorder and childbirth. Taking as its main focus the early and mid-Nineteenth Century, it traces the creation of a new category of mental breakdown, one linked closely to ideals of maternity and domestic ideology. Exploring the relationship between women, their families and their doctors reveals how explanations for the onset of puerperal insanity were drawn from a broad set of moral, social and environmental frameworks, rather than being bound to female vulnerability and biological explanations alone. Puerperal insanity was no discriminator between social classes, striking wealthy ladies, cushioned by luxury and attended in childbirth by the best medical attendance available, just as much as poor women, debilitated by want and hardship, . The horror of this devastating disorder whuich upturned the household, turning gentle mothers into disruptive and dangerous mad women, and in the worst-case scenario child-murderers, was magnified by it occurring at a time when it was anticipated that women would be most happy in the fulfillment of their role as mothers Front Matter....Pages i-xii Introduction....Pages 1-8 The Birth of Puerperal Insanity....Pages 9-27 Boundaries of Expertise and the Location of Puerperal Insanity....Pages 28-64 Disordered Households: Puerperal Insanity and the Bourgeois Home....Pages 65-94 Incoherent, Violent and Thin: Patients and Puerperal Insanity in the Royal Edinburgh Asylum....Pages 95-134 Women, Doctors and Mental Disorder: Explaining Puerperal Insanity in the Nineteenth Century....Pages 135-166 Dangerous Mothers: Puerperal Insanity and Infanticide....Pages 167-200 From Redemption to the Dark Age: The Demise of Puerperal Insanity....Pages 201-209 Back Matter....Pages 210-303