Perceptions of Pregnancy from the Seventeenth to the Twentieth Century (Genders and Sexualities in History)

This multi-disciplinary collection brings together work by scholars from Britain, America and Canada on the popular, personal and institutional histories of pregnancy. It follows the process of reproduction from conception and contraception, to birth and parenthood. The contributors explore several key themes: narratives of pregnancy and birth, the patient-consumer, and literary representations of childbearing. This book explores how these issues have been constructed, represented and experienced in a range of geographical locations from the seventeenth to the twentieth century. Crossing the boundary between the pre-modern and modern worlds, the chapters reveal the continuities, similarities and differences in understanding a process that is often, in the popular mind-set, considered to be fundamental and unchanging. Front Matter....Pages i-xv Introduction....Pages 1-9 Front Matter....Pages 11-11 “Breeding” a “Little Stranger”: Managing Uncertainty in Pregnancy in Later Georgian England....Pages 13-33 “Bound to Be a Troublesome Time”: Canadian Perceptions of Pregnancy, Parturition, and Pain, c. 1867–1930....Pages 35-55 Families, Vulnerability and Sexual Violence During the Irish Revolution....Pages 57-75 Audible Birth, Listening Women: Storytelling the Labouring Body on Mumsnet....Pages 77-105 Front Matter....Pages 107-107 Feminine Value and Reproduction in Rowley’s The Birth of Merlin ....Pages 109-131 “Pregnant Women Gaze at the Precious Thing Their Souls Are Set On”: Perceptions of the Pregnant Body in Early Modern Literature....Pages 133-159 Babies Without Husbands: Unmarried Pregnancy in 1960s British Fiction....Pages 161-185 Front Matter....Pages 187-187 The Birth of the Pregnant Patient-Consumer? Payment, Paternalism, and Maternity Hospitals in Early-Twentieth-Century England....Pages 189-212 “Closer Together”: Durex Condoms and Contraceptive Consumerism in 1970s Britain....Pages 213-236 Back Matter....Pages 237-251 Jennifer Evans, Ciara Meehan, Editors. Product Of 3 Day Conference Held In University Of Herfordshire Summer Of 2013. Includes Bibliographical References And Index.