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Prophylactic practices: Contraception and the construction of female desire from Eliza Haywood to George Eliot

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Prophylactic practices: Contraception and the construction of female desire from Eliza Haywood to George Eliot

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P r o p h y l a c t ic P r a c t ic e s:
CONTRACEPTION AND THE CONSTRUCTION OF FEMALE DESIRE
F ro m E liz a H a y w o o d t o G e o r g e E l i o t
by
Debra Silverm an
A Dissertation Presented to the
FACULTY OF THE GRADUATE SCHOOL
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
In Partial Fulfillm ent of the
Requirements for the Degree
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
(English)
August 1995
Copyright 1995 Debra Silverman
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UMI Number: 9614071
Copyright 1995 by
Silverman, Debra Beth
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UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
THE GRADUATE SCHOOL
UNIVERSITY PARK
LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA 90007
This dissertation, written by
Debra Silverm an
under the direction of hex. Dissertation
Committee, and approved by all its members,
has been presented to and accepted by The
Graduate School, in partial fulfillment of re
quirements for the degree of
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
Dean o f Graduate Studies
D a te ■ . ....... ................ ................ ........
Chairperson
DISSERTAT]
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Debra Silverman Professor Tania Modleski
Professor Peter Manning
Prophylactic Practices:
Contraception and the Construction of Female Desire
From Eliza Haywood to George Eliot
In this project, I argue th a t when we examine the trope of
contraception in so-called traditional plots of female desire and literary
production, we can begin to think of women's textual experiences— as
readers, authors, heroines— in vastly different ways. For example, we
might begin to differentiate more clearly between biological reproduction
and textual production and examine more closely the gendered politics
inherent in both terms. Throughout the project, I m aintain th a t
contraception can provide us w ith one of the necessary theoretical tools
whereby we can locate female desire in sites other than the traditional
m arriage plot or within norm ative family scenes. More im portantly, I
suggest th at we might begin to locate female desire not on the pregnant
body as sign of consummated desire, but rather within the narrative
impulse itself— in the desire to create stories, to control narratives, to pass
contraceptive information onto female readers and to plot female desire
against the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century conduct and medical
literature th at suggested women's desires should be regulated and fiercely
controlled. I argue th at a theory and discourse of prophylaxis enables a
different reading of female-authored texts in that it provides one way to
negotiate both the conservative and radical gestures of women's writing.
Examining the politics of birth control and the control of birth, while
simultaneously time tracing the move from propriety as birth control in the
eighteenth century to the first mention of the contraceptive sponge in 1823,1
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suggest th at women w riters m anipulated social prescriptions, using them
as textual shields behind which they could plot female desire. Untangling
the discursive webs th a t form these shields is part of mapping the complex
relationship between women,the texts they produced and those they
consumed. As a result, we can trace the ways in which women w riters—
such as Frances Burney, M aria Edgeworth, George Eliot, Eliza Haywood,
H arriet M artineau and Mary Shelley-politicized the interchange between
their radical plots and the prophylactic pressures of social convention
represented in a range of cultural texts, including midwife m anuals,
conduct books and medical literature.
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ii
Acknowledgem ents
I would like to thank the following people who helped me in the
formative stages of this project, and who have supported me intellectually
and w ith their patient and generous friendships: Michael Bacchus, Joe
Boone, Rich Cante, Michelle de la Rosa, Wade Thompson H arper, David
Hayward, Ed Jaffe, Peggy Kamuf, Donna Landry, Tami P arr, Karin
Quimby, Ami Regier, and H ilary Schor.
I especially would like to thank Peter Manning and Tania Modleski
both of whom helped me see the project through. Their support,
encouragem ent, enthusiasm and critical engagem ent has been an
inspiration and a rare gift.
My family has been wonderful, patient, encouraging and, above all,
interested in my work. They took me on much-needed vacations so th a t I
could clear my head, and listened to me talk endlessly about contraception
and fem inist politics. I would like to thank Ellen and A 1 Goldberg, Leon
and Judy Silverman, Ann Marie and Jay Hebert, my brother Gregg and my
sisters Lauren, Amber and Elyse. Thank you beyond words goes to
Christopher Hebert who read and edited every sentence of this project; I
thank him for his kindness, love and support.
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TA B LE OF C O N T E N T S
Preface
C hapter 1:
C hapter 2:
C hapter 3:
C hapter 4:
C hatper 5:
C hapter 6:
Works Cited
iv
Gendered and Dangerous Knowledge:
The Impropriety of B irth Control 1
Mary W ollstonecraft’s Prophylactic Politics:
Propriety as Birth Control 56
Protecting the Genteel Woman:
Body Doubles in Eliza Haywood's
The History of Miss Betsv Thoughtless 104
Giving Birth to Rabbits:
N arrative Desire, Medical Genius and
Female Im agination 143
Mary Shelley's F rankenstein:
Freak Shows and Home-made Prophylactics 200
H arriet M artineau and the Contraceptive
Sponge: Taming the M onstrous Family 246
287
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Preface
iv
On the day I completed the penultim ate draft of this project, I was
carrying it around hot off the copy machine and a fellow graduate student
asked me w hat I was clutching so close to my breast. I proudly answered,
"A draft of my dissertation." She replied, "Now you'll experience the pains
of postpartum depression." My witty rejoinder: "I hope not since I wrote
the dissertation about birth control." My colleague's comment was
particularly ironic because my project is in many ways a critique of the very
assum ptions th a t lie behind her rem ark, and it brought home to me some of
the concerns with which I began this project. By invoking postpartum
depression, the comment recalls a profound, historically persistent and
culturally current conflation of the processes of biological reproduction and
textual production. The postpartum depression comment was amusing
precisely because this project is decidedly not a biological reproduction; as
we shall see, it is really not about reproduction at all, but about not
reproducing.
In this project I argue th at when we examine the trope of
contraception in so-called traditional plots of female desire and literary
production, we can begin to think of women's textual experiences— as
readers, authors, heroines— in vastly different ways. For example, we
might begin to differentiate more clearly between biological reproduction
and textual production and examine more closely the gendered politics
inherent in both terms. Throughout the project, I m aintain th a t
contraception can provide us with one of the necessary theoretical tools
whereby we can locate female desire in sites other than the traditional
m arriage plot or w ithin norm ative family scenes. More im portantly, I
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suggest th at we m ight begin to locate female desire not on the pregnant
body as sign of consummated desire, but rath er w ithin the narrative
impulse itself— in the desire to create stories, to control narratives, to pass
contraceptive information onto female readers and to plot female desire
against the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century conduct and medical
literature th a t suggested women's desires should be regulated and fiercely
controlled. I argue th a t a theory and discourse of prophylaxis enables a
different reading of female-authored texts in th at it provides one way to
negotiate the frequent co-presence of the conservative and radical gestures
in women's writing. Examining the politics of birth control and the actual
control of birth, while simultaneously tracing the move from propriety as
birth control in the eighteenth century to the first mention of the
contraceptive sponge in 1823,1 suggest th a t women w riters manipulated
social prescriptions, using them as textual shields behind which they could
plot female desire. U ntangling the discursive webs th a t form these shields
is part of mapping the complex relationships between women, the texts they
produced and those they consumed. As a result, we can trace the ways in
which women w riters— such as Frances Burney, M aria Edgeworth, George
Eliot, Eliza Haywood, H arriet M artineau and Mary Shelley— politicized the
interchange between their radical plots and the prophylactic pressures of
social convention represented in a range of cultural texts, including
midwife m anuals, conduct books and medical literatu re.
I would like to pose two questions a t the sta rt of this project. First,
what does it mean to talk about control-birth control, discursive control,
representational control— in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries,
especially as it appeared in the texts th at I discuss? As part of this project I
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provide a brief history of contraception in order to map a trajectory that
extends from w hat I read as figurative forms of contraception— virtue
and propriety-to literal contraceptive practices— the use of condoms and
contraceptive sponges. As a critic working at the end of the twentieth
century, it is virtually impossible to write about birth control without briefly
mentioning at the beginning, as a way of fram ing the project, the
importance of this term for contemporary fem inist politics because I
inevitably read these politics back into the centuries I am studying. Anyone
familiar with the current political landscape knows th at at least since the
early eighties abortion has claimed center stage in political discussions at
both the national and local levels and, for feminist politics, protecting the
legality of abortion has been the primary focus of much national and
community action. One m ight even argue th a t access to safe and legal
abortions has, in tw entieth-century parlance, come to symbolize women's
control of their own bodies. We find this rhetoric in the pro-choice slogans
th at announce "My Body My Choice" or "Keep Your Laws Off My Body."
Inherent in such rhetoric is the notion th at having a body means th at the
person living inside of it should and can exercise total control over its
functions; that laws and politics should not govern personal choice. These
political slogans ask is th at no new legislation be adopted th a t will threaten
Roe v. Wade, the 1973 Supreme Court decision th at made access to abortion
legal. However, personal choice is inscribed in the law, and the irony of
these bumper stickers is th a t feminist action groups, such as the National
Organization of Women or the N ational Abortion Rights Action League
want to legislate this control, or a t the very least protect the legislation that
currently makes this control possible. "Keep Your Laws Off My Body"
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vii
means w hat it says-law s should not govern bodies— while at the same time
implying th at control can be legislated, th a t it is not really a m atter of
free choice.
For late-tw entieth century feminism, access to abortion has come to
signify sexual and bodily liberation and, in many ways, it symbolizes access
to adulthood and subjectivity. Control is figured as liberation, while
reproductive freedom, in p art because of its political weight, is spoken of as
the most essential of all freedoms for women. At the same time, it is
im portant to note th at the rhetoric of control is caught in a complicated web
of signiflers, suggesting th at the means to control are not necessarily as
liberating and viable as at first glance they might seem. In their article
"American Feminism and the Language of Control," Irene Diamond and
Lee Quinby suggest that within the language of control a complex
relationship exists between women's bodies and feminism's radical
demands for reproductive freedoms. For them, control is a vexed term , a
double bind of possibility and impossibility which, when used to discuss
reproductive rights, falls too easily into the problematic equation th at
sexuality is an instrum ent of truth. Therefore, they "want to point out that
many fem inists argue for reproductive rights in the language of control
and sexuality characteristic of a technology of sex" th at compromises lived
experiences and desensitizes the complexities of fertility issues (197-98). In
other words, the language of control weaves a web too complex to be
untangled by the ideal th at reproductive freedom is the fundam ental
necessity for equality among and between the sexes. The word control, they
remind us, still contains w ithin its structure connotations of m astery th at
are anything but liberating.
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If the meaning of control is difficult to trace in our own historical
moment, and I have only begun to do so here, it is too simple to suggest th at
we can read the politics of control as they were figured in England
during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. I wish to suggest th at
these politics were discursively registered in the range of texts th at I
examine in this study, and th a t we might begin to understand the
complexities of the term "control" by looking specifically a t the rhetoric
aimed at regulating women's bodies, reproduction, midwifery and
contraceptive practices. I began the project with the hope th at I could trace
a discourse of liberation, actively constructed by women w riters, in direct
opposition to dom inant ideologies. I have come to realize th a t gestures
toward w hat we m ight call freedom always come up against hegemonic
discourses, and th at any strong ideology can meet w ith and discursively
integrate, hence neutralize, challenges to its power. This is not to suggest
th a t women w riters were not engaged in challenging and resisting
patriarchal constructions of womanhood and female desire, but to suggest
th at their textual productions can not be figured only as liberating and
radical. Even while women w riters can be read as m anipulating
traditional plots of containm ent, they might also be read as constructing
plots that were equally restrictive. By examining w hat I call in my title
prophylactic practices, I hope to highlight the doubleness of women's
writing— how it both participated in and helped to realign eighteenth- and
nineteenth-century ideals of womanhood and female desire.
The second question to consider is two-fold: Why have I chosen these
particular texts, and why the em phasis on gender as a sign of difference?
The texts in this study were chosen, in part, because they each represent an
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historical moment on my continuum from propriety to the contraceptive
sponge. I examine a relatively small num ber of texts w ritten during my
period of inquiry--a m ixture of novels and political tracts. In chapter four,
all the texts except for Tobias Smollett’s The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle
are non-fiction descriptions of one specific event— the Mary Toft Hoax;
H arriet M artineau's w ritings, discussed in chapter six, are from her
Illustrations of Political Economy, social philosophy in loosely fictionalized
form. I am not w riting a history of birth control, nor have I attem pted to
cite every instance of contraception as it appeared in novels, essays and
other texts from this period. Rather, I attem pt to highlight the connections
between a num ber of discrete texts and cultural moments by suggesting
that, via reproductive and contraceptive sub-plots, we can trace one
particular narrative about the construction of female desire. While this is a
literary investigation, I argue th at non-literary texts— midwife m anuals,
medical how-to books, conduct books-set the context for my analysis. In a
sense, the chapters are a series of speculations or case studies, analyses of
exemplary texts th at in no way claim to be an exhaustive history of birth
control or female representation in British literature. To construct my
argum ent, I have deliberately chosen both canonical and non-canonical
novels as the m aterial for this study. I wish to suggest new readings of
canonical texts such as Mary Shelley's Frankenstein or George Eliot's
Adam Bede and Mill on the Floss in order to illustrate how a theory of
prophylaxis can nuance our readings of texts in ways th a t are quite
different from other critical approaches. At the sam e time, I w ant to
breathe new life into lesser-known novels such as Frances Burney's The
W anderer. Eliza Haywood's The History of Miss Betsv Thoughtless and
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X
Fantom ina. M aria Edgeworth's Belinda, and M artineau's Illustrations of
Political Economy.
In each chapter my prim ary focus is on a female-authored text. I
chose this approach because I had hoped to trace a specifically female
discourse of narrative and bodily control; however, as I worked on the
project I came to realize th a t this "control" is much more complex than I at
first assumed. The project reflects these complexities. More im portantly, I
chose to work on female-authored texts because of the historically powerful
conflation of biological reproduction and textual production with which I
began this preface. It is my contention th a t when we add an im pedim ent—
contraception— into this equation, making it possible for women to
discursively produce and not ju st reproduce, we happen upon a new set of
readings. Each of my main texts deals w ith the problem of reproduction in
a specific way. I wish to suggest th a t by adding contraception into the mix
we might be able to read the processes of female-authored production as
somehow working against or m anipulating the processes by which the
female body has been culturally constructed. While my main focus is on
women writers, I also analyze texts by Jam es Boswell, Daniel Defoe, Henry
Fielding, John Hill, Bernard M andeville, and Laurence Sterne, among
others.
I would like to make it clear from the outset th at I posit a difference
between female-authored and m ale-authored texts, and th a t I accept
responsibility for this critical move. In her im portant essay "Emphasis
Added: Plots and Plausibilities in Women's Fiction," Nancy K. Miller
illustrates one way in which "difference can be read" (27). Reacting against
the discourse of Venture fem in in e, which "privileges a textuality of the
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avant-garde," Miller argues th at we should be attentive to gender
differences in our feminist readings (27). At stake in feminist criticism is
"a reading th at consciously recreates the object it describes, attentive
always to a difference. . . not dependent on the discovery of an exclusive
alterity" (29). This is an enabling form ulation because when we construct
any critical reading of a text we add our own emphasis; here the em phasis
is on gender. Following Irigaray, M iller argues th a t this em phasis is "an
italicized version of what passes for the neutral or standard face" (29).
Miller is talking about a "certain quality of voice," and I believe th a t we
have not come far enough in the history of feminist criticism to relinquish
this voice. As feminist critics, we m ight do well to emphasize continually
the voices of female authors, as well as our own, especially as these voices
enable subsequent feminist investigations and critiques.
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Chapter 1
Gendered and Dangerous Knowledge:
The Impropriety of Birth Control
In August of 1723, readers of the G entlem an's M agazine might have
read about a woman who had ju st been tried at the Derby assizes on the
charge of being an abortionist. Eleanor Beare had been indicted on three
counts. The first accused her of attem pting to persuade a husband to poison
his wife; the second and third count charged abortion. The report read:
Indicted a second time. . . for a m isdemeanor, in destroying
the foetus in the womb of Grace Belfort, by putting an iron
instrum ent up into her body, and thereby causing her to
m iscarry.
Indicted a third time, for destroying the foetus in the womb
of a certain woman, to the jury unknown, by putting an iron
instrum ent up her body, or by giving her something to
make her miscarry. (Keown, 8-9)
The Crown charged th at Beare had participated in "destroying" at least two
fetuses and had conspired to abort a third. To this charge, Beare pleaded
not guilty.
To make its case against Beare, the Crown argued th a t she had acted
against the "natural tenderness of the female sex." Her acts had been
m onstrous, unfem inine, and cruel, and her crime was described as "of a
most shocking nature." Women, the Crown suggested, were supposed to
produce children, not take their lives. Speaking to the jury, the counsel for
the Crown described the severity of Beare's offense:
Gentlemen, you have heard the indictm ent read, and may
observe, th at the misdemeanor for which the prisoner
stands indicted, is of a most shocking nature; to destroy the
fruit of the womb carries something in it so contrary to the
natural tenderness of the female sex, th a t I am amazed
how ever any woman should arrive a t such a degree of
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impiety and cruelty, as to attem pt it in such a m anner as
the prisoner has done; it has really something so shocking
in it, th at I cannot well display the nature of the crime to
you, but m ust leave it to the evidence: It is cruel and
barbarous to the last degree. (Keown, 9)
Beare was found guilty, the judge concluding th a t he had "never met with a
case so barbarous and unnatural."
John Keown, in his historical analysis of abortion laws, uses Beare's
case to illustrate the fact th at even before abortion was officially outlawed by
England's secular courts in 1803, it had been considered a punishable
offence. Keown cites many cases prior to 1803 in which men are accused of
trying to procure abortions for women, but Eleanor Beare's case stands out
from the rest for two im portant reasons. First, Beare's trial was reported
in a popular magazine, suggesting th at the knowledge of abortion was
wide-spread and th a t the topic, especially when focused by a trial, was
suitable for public consumption. In reporting her crime and emphasizing
the unfeminine behavior of the defendant, the G entlem an's Magazine
played to eighteenth-century ideals of female propriety. Beare's breach of
propriety made for titillating reportage, not too distant from the stuff of
twentieth-century tabloid journalism . Secondly, Beare is one of the few
women charged w ith perform ing abortions in eighteenth-century England.
Keown cites a num ber of cases in which men are accused of providing
women with the means to procure or induce abortion, but more often than
not these men were found innocent of their crimes. In R v. Turner, for
example, a weaver was accused of making his lover, one Elizabeth Mason,
"take and swallow a certain quantity of arsenick [sicI mixed with treacle in
order to kill and destroy a male bastard child." Turner is not prosecuted as
an abortionist, nor is he found guilty of his crime. The judge said there was
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3
not enough evidence to make a case against Turner. Beare's crime, on the
other hand, was heinous because it was "unnatural." A woman should
w ant to promote m aternity, to aid other women in th eir n atural role as
mothers, not intervene and interrupt the progress of nature. Only a really
horrible woman, the Crown argued, could perform such acts; only a
"barbarous" woman could so completely disregard her fem inine duties and
the exercise of propriety which accompanied such duties. In the end,
Eleanor Beare was found guilty and sentenced to two days of public
hum iliation and three years im prisonm ent. In looking at the judicial
record of the period, it seems clear th at she was found guilty not because
she performed abortions, but because she was a woman perform ing
abortions. The unw ritten subtext of her trial, as presented to the public, was
th at women were made to give birth, not to prevent it.
Beare's case helps to illustrate th at in the eighteenth and early-
nineteenth centuries control of birth and birth-control knowledge were
contested issues. Women were playing a dangerous game if they chose the
role of abortionist. By assum ing this role, women were choosing to overstep
social boundaries governed by propriety. Not only was the abortionist acting
in an unfeminine m anner, she was also attem pting to cover-up for her
patient's own breach of propriety. Thus the female abortionist's
unfeminine and "barbarous" acts were taking place on two levels
sim ultaneously. And, as we shall see, when laws were w ritten to
criminalize abortion, they were aimed both at the practitioners and the
women who sought th eir services. The courts were establishing their
position as an institution which exerted social control over women's bodies.
Indeed, they became regulators and legal enforcers of female propriety. As
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4
Mary Poovey has noted, "by the end of the eighteenth century the Proper
Lady was a fam iliar household companion" (3). I would add th a t the
proper lady had become a useful tool in constructing laws as well. In turn,
these laws would participate in the conflation of female nature with
feminine behavior, thus helping to naturalize the social construction of
"femininity."
Mary Poovey has insightfully argued th at "because bourgeois society
sim ultaneously depended upon and perpetuated a paradoxical formulation
of female sexuality, the late eighteenth-century equation o f’female' and
'feminine' is characterized at every level by paradoxes and contradictions"
(15). Modesty and chastity, for example, were thought to be among a
women's "natural" virtues, but the vast am ount of conduct literature aimed
at describing and reenforcing such virtues belied an unspoken fear th at
women were neither naturally modest nor chaste. The need continually to
remind women of th eir own "nature" relied implicitly on the assum ption
th at without gentle cautions women would revert to the libidinous creatures
society feared. Women were positioned as modest beings who,
simultaneously, experienced potentially uncontrollable sexual appetites.
Women were cautioned against indulging any appetites, and, as Poovey
suggests, "all attacks of female 'appetite' were also, implicitly, defenses of
female chastity." Such attacks, Poovey w rites, were common: "the
underlying assum ption was th a t once indulged, any appetite would become
voracious and lead eventually to the most dangerous desire of all" (20). The
fear of women's sexual appetites is precisely w hat made Beare's case so
threatening to a social order which relied so specifically on propriety. By
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5
aborting a child, Beare could erase the m arker of desire; she could tangibly
cover-up a woman's breach of social mores.
Abortion was the form of birth control most publicly contested in
eighteenth-century England. Cases of abortion were on display in the
courts, in newspapers and in magazines. Abortion, along w ith infanticide,
was one of the first forms of "contraception" to be outlawed and regulated.
Many critics have argued th a t before 1803 when Britain passed w hat was
known as Lord Ellenborough's Act (43 George III), abortion was a
common-law rig h t.1 Since there were no statutory precedents for
prosecuting women or men who attem pted to procure abortions or aided in
inducing miscarriages, the history of abortion in the eighteenth century is
difficult to sketch. Eleanor Beare's case, however, makes it clear th at
abortion was a crime even in 1723. One could be prosecuted for performing
abortions as well as for simply wishing to obtain one. However, abortion
was a nebulous crime; it is difficult to discern w hat counted as evidence for
prosecution before 1803. In addition, there were no strict definitions of
poisons, nor was there a clear meaning assigned to the word "intent."
Prior to 1803, the crime of abortion had been regulated by the church and
cases were tried in the ecclesiastical courts. The only agreed upon
prohibition, first defined by the ecclesiastical courts and later w ritten into
the British statutes, was th at abortion was a crime if it was attem pted after
^ oh n Keown investigates the common-law history of abortion in the beginning of
his book Abortion, doctors and the law . His is an excellent source for references about the
history of abortion law. Keown begins his book with a quotation from law historian Cyril
C. Means. Means states: "During the late seventeenth, the whole of the eighteenth, and
early nineteenth centuries, English and American women were totally free from all
restraints, ecclesiastical as well as secular, in regard to the term ination of unwanted
pregnancies, at any tim e during gestation" (Keown, 3). The rem ainder of Keown's book
contests Means' statem ent, proving th at his was a common (twentieth-century) legal
m isperception.
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the fetus had become "quick" or "animated." Quickening was taken to
mean th at a fetus had become a baby and could live outside of the mother.
The pregnant woman was frequently the only witness of quickening.
Consequently, the courts had to rely on pregnant women to define their own
guilt. If a woman felt her baby "quicken" and attem pted to procure an
abortion, she was com m itting a crime, one both immoral and unnatural.
When Britain passed its first anti-abortion law, Lord Ellenborough's
Act, abortion was included in a long list of "malicious" acts against the
King's subjects which inflicted "grievous bodily Harm." The Act was
aimed at the "further Prevention of malicious shooting, and attem pting to
discharge loaded Fire-Arms, stabbing, cutting, wounding, poisoning, and
the malicious using of M eans to procure the M iscarriage of Women; and
also the malicious setting of Fires to Buildings." M iscarriage is buried in
an odd list of crimes, most of which harm bodies, but includes, strangely,
harm to buildings. Each potentially stabbed or wounded body is assumed to
belong to the King; thus, inflicting harm on this body of "subjects"
constitutes an affront to the royal body. The Act assumes th at all life (and
property) is sacred— born and unborn. Section I of the Act makes
punishable by law any person who
shall wilfully, maliciously, and unlawfully adm inister to,
or cause to be adm inistered to or taken by any of his
Majesty's Subjects, any deadly Poison, or other noxious and
destructive Substance or Thing, with Intent such his
Majesty's Subject or Subjects thereby to murder, or thereby
to cause and procure the M iscarriage of any Women then
being quick with Child. (43 Geo. Ill, c. 58 )
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Abortion, or adm inistering "noxious" substances for th at purpose, was
considered murder, in line with shooting, stabbing and other kinds of
poisoning.
"Being quick w ith child" was a defining moment in section I of Lord
Ellenborough's Act. Section II made it an offence to attem pt miscarriage
even if a woman was not quick with child:
And w hereas it may sometimes happen th a t Poison or some
other noxious and destructive Substance of Thing may be
given, or other Means used, w ith In ten t to procure
M iscarriage or Abortion where the Woman may not be
quick with Child at the Time, or it may not be proved that
she was quick with Child; be it therefore further enacted,
That if any Person or Persons. . . shall wilfully and
maliciously adm inister to, or cause to be adm inistered to, or
taken by any Woman, any Medicines, Drug, or other
Substance or Thing whatsoever, or shall use or employ, or
cause or procure to be used or employed, any Instrum ent or
other Means whatsoever, with Intent thereby to cause or
procure M iscarriage of any Woman not being, or not being
proven to be, quick with child at the Time of administering
such Things or using such Means, th a t then and in every
such Case the Person or Persons so offending, their
Counsellors, Aiders, and Abettors, knowing of and privy to
such Offence, shall be and are hereby declared to be guilty of
a Felony. (43 Geo. Ill, c. 58 )
Under this Act, all participants would be prosecuted, and, most
im portantly, a woman's word would no longer be taken as authority on the
question of quickening.2 Even if the prosecution could not prove th at a fetus
2In The Abortionist: A Woman Against the Law (New York: The Free Press,
1994), Rickie Sollinger describes how quickening functioned in the American courts from
the eighteenth to the early nineteenth centuries. Her sum m ary applies equally well to pre-
1803 England: "The notion of quickening was a venerable, woman-centered concept, long
embedded in the common law. It allowed that a pregnancy could not be confirmed until the
woman felt the fetus move within her body. In the days before drugstore pregnancy kits,
sonograms and rabbit tests, and all the other modern m ethods of verifying pregnancy, the
woman herself was the definitive expert. Doctors and m idw ives agreed that menstrual
irregu larity-in fact, all the sym ptom s of pregnancy-c o u ld be associated with conditions
other than pregnancy. So traditionally, it was not until the woman reported the sensation
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was anim ated, a woman, and anyone who helped her, could be charged
with a malicious act. The state wanted to regulate the act of abortion, to
take it completely out of the hands (or wombs) of women and to place it into
the hands of the law, courts and doctors. As historian Barbara Duden has
observed, by the eighteenth century the notion of quickening was on its way
to elim ination by the discourse of science as the criterion for perceiving
pregnancy. U ltim ately, Duden observes, the word was dropped from the
English language. F ar from the seventeenth-century notion th at
quickening was "an acknowledged fact th a t women experience a bodily
reality unknown to men," the 1803 Act suggests th at law and medicine
were well on the way to "invadlingl woman's gendered interior and
openfingl it to | a I nongendered public gaze" (80-81).
In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the public gaze at and
into the womb was not the "nongendered" gaze of tw entieth-century
reproductive technologies to which Duden alludes. During the eighteenth
and nineteenth centuries in England there was a discernable shift in
control over the contested space of female reproduction. With the advent of
medicine as a profession and its codification into an official discipline in the
middle of the 1700s, knowledge about birth, female nature and women’s
reproductive experience shifted from midwives to doctors. Medical experts
at the time suggested th at this shift was one from ignorance to knowledge,
a medical enlightenm ent of the dark spaces of custom and superstition.
Thus, as we shall see, the many medical m anuals of the period argued th a t
the midwife was a dangerous person, a w itch perhaps, whose ignorance
of fetal m ovem ent that she could be declared pregnant" (12). In America this meant that an
abortion before quickening w as not considered a crime.
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and gender should keep her from practicing medicine. And, as Eleanor
Beare's case illustrates, women were prosecuted and punished for
interfering with the n atu ral progress of reproduction. The midwife was a
dangerous woman, and the female abortionist was figured as her horrific
counterpart.
By the middle of the eighteenth century it had become "improper" for
women to practice medicine or to discuss, in public, reproduction.
Motherhood was an appropriate subject of female discourse, but getting
pregnant was not. Popular novels and advice books for women extolled the
virtues of motherhood but rarely touched upon the act of impregnation.
While they talked in detail about the bodily processes of pregnancy, they
tended to ignore sex altogether. And, when they did speak of impregnation,
the discussion was frequently secreted under many layers of ambiguous
language. While advice books and domestic novels w ritten specifically for
women were engaged in continually reenforcing women's "natural"
inclinations for propriety, chastity and virtue, they were sim ultaneously
supplying women w ith vital information about how to subvert such
constricting prescriptions for their every day behavior. These domestic
texts were a cornucopia of knowledge if only one could read the codes. The
most deeply buried knowledge was about how an unm arried woman could
keep her virtue, act properly, and still engage in sexual intercourse. In
other words, the most hidden and dangerous knowledge dissem inated in
these varied texts was knowledge about contraception. As we shall see,
contraceptive language was made more explicit by the m id-nineteenth
century, but in the eighteenth century, propriety, or at least the appearance
of propriety was to operate as a woman's birth control.
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This is not to suggest th a t real contraceptives were not available to an
eighteenth-century B ritish woman. Indeed, tw entieth-century historians
such as Lawrence Stone, Angus M cLaren and John Keown have suggested
th a t abortion functioned as one form of contraception in pre-industrial
England. Abortion, however, is not a contraceptive at all; it only becomes a
possibility when conception is an accomplished fact. Abortion is a post
conception form of birth control. Contraceptives were available in
eighteenth-century England, but abortion as an after-the-fact remedy seems
to have been more common. One problem with the distribution and use of
contraceptives, until the m id-nineteenth century, was th a t they were often
linked with pornography and thought improper for use outside of the erotic
world of brothels and licentious fiction. The Marquis de Sade's Philosophy
in the Bedroom, first published in France in 1795, includes extensive
discussions about contraceptives. In the text, contraceptive information
passes from woman to woman, from the more experienced M adame de
Saint-Ange to her young student Eugenie. Included in the list of ways to
end or prevent pregnancy are abortion, contraceptive sponges, condoms
and, de Sade's favorite form of contraception, sodomy. Madame de Saint-
Ange, introducing her young student to the world of sexual pleasures,
claims, contrary to the laws of "nature," th at it is a woman's duty to
experience sexual pleasure w ithout producing children. H er argum ent
can be read as an early fem inist gesture toward female pleasure; the social
prescriptions for women's n atu ral behavior are "absurd," Saint-Ange
argues, the "handiwork of men." She informs Eugenie, "we m ust not
subm it to them" (223). Indeed, one purpose of Eugenie's education is to
teach her how to "preserve h erself’— how to prevent children. Eugenie begs
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her teacher: "I beseech you, let us follow in detail the m anners by which a
young person, m arried or not, may preserve herself from pregnancy, for I
confess I am made most timorous by dread of it, whether it be the work of
the husband I m ust take, or the effect of a career of libertinage" (228).
It is clear th a t Madame de Saint-Ange prefers to prepare Eugenie for
a career of libertinage, but it is also suggested th a t her advice about
contraception applies within m arriage. Having a t least one child within
marriage might be a woman's duty, but after she has fulfilled this duty, it
is "most charming" for women "to cheat propagation of its rights and to
contradict what fools call the laws of Nature" (229). Madame de Saint-Ange
tells Eugenie about many forms of contraception in descriptive and pseudo
scientific detail.
Some women insert sponges into the vagina's interior;
these, intercepting the sperm, prevent it from springing
into the vessel where generation occurs. Others oblige their
fuckers to make use of a little sack of Venetian skin, in the
vulgate called a condom, which the semen fills and where it
is prevented from flowing farther. But of all the
possibilities, th at presented by the ass is without a doubt the
most delicious. (230)
Madame de Saint-Ange reminds Eugenie th at, "a girl risks having a child
only in proportion to the frequency with which she perm its the man to
invade her cunt" (229). Sodomy eliminates the risk of pregnancy, she
teaches, and provides immense pleasure for women.3
3In her book The Family Romance of the French Revolution (Berkeley: U of
California P, 1992), Lynn Hunt provides an excellent critique of the problematic sexual
politics of Philosophy in the Bedroom. Hunt suggests that de Sade was interested in sexual
libertinage, but only to the extent that such freedom would make women always available
for men's sexual pleasure. Hunt points out that de Sade wanted to place all women in
brothels so that they would be more localized and available: "Sade advocates making all
women available to all men" (143). Women should be, a s Madame de Saint-Ange
suggests, "like the bitch, the she-wolf: she m ust belong to all who want her" (Hunt's
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Pornographic w ritings, such as Philosophy in the Bedroom and,
later, Mv Secret Life, published anonymously in Victorian England, freely
discussed contraceptives. The condom m akes num erous appearances in
the latter text, prim arily as a way of preventing the novel's male author
from contracting a venereal disease. Although such texts would have been
a part of the cultural milieu which spawned novels of middle-class, female
education, th eir overt discussions of sexuality would have made them
unavailable to the genteel, young reader who was being educated to chastity
and propriety. An analysis of these sexually explicit texts lies outside the
scope of this project; however, their presence adds another layer of
confusion to an examination of birth control and the novel. Because I am
looking a t novels, political tracts and medical texts which extol the many
"natural" virtues of propriety, de Sade's im proper text, for example, m ust
be factored out of my analysis. The literature examined in the chapters th at
follow was much more restrained and proper. In the eighteenth century,
w riters such as Mary Wollstonecraft and Eliza Haywood were constrained
by their im plicit audience: girls from good families and women who were
already raising families of their own. However, as we move into the
nineteenth century, Mary Shelley, H arriet M artineau and George Eliot
illustrate how the stakes of propriety and gentility had changed.
This chapter, as well as those which follow, traces the intersections
of eighteenth- and nineteenth- century anxieties about women's bodies
through an exam ination of women as authors, midwives, virgins, potential
mothers and prostitutes. Women's bodies have continually been a site of
translation, 143). De Sade's prescriptions for women's sexual pleasure have as their
subtext the prostitution of all female bodies.
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definition and anxiety, an anxiety th a t was especially acute during the
eighteenth-century when more women started m arrying for love and virtue
became the highest overt commodity on the m arriage m arket. Scripting the
movements and proper role of female bodies was part of a social project th at
took place on the pages of novels, in conduct books, medical texts and
political posturing. However, such conscriptions are complicated when one
introduces contraception into the discussion. Contraceptive discourses
were conspicuously ignored in cultural definitions of "proper" womanhood.
Rather, a woman's "natural" inclination tow ard motherhood was
strenuously insisted upon. Such prescriptions helped to create what I
would like to call a "prophylactic" discourse aimed at containing and
regulating the female body. By collapsing women's creative and
procreative abilities, and by insisting on a tangible connection between
women's literary and biological reproduction, a discourse of social
protection emerged aimed at the literal and literary containm ent of female
bodies. Examining these conflations opens up new avenues for
investigating women w riters who seemingly participated in and helped to
produce a prophylactic discourse.
Women writers used social prescriptions, such as the image of the
proper lady or the guise of a moral narrative, as veils behind which they
could plot female desires. At the same time, such desires necessitated the
dissemination of birth-control information in order to keep society from
reading the m ark of desire--pregnancy— on a woman's body. Such
information could have been gleaned from the pages of novels and conduct
literature, especially if one could read the doubleness of the text. As a
theoretical model, prophylaxis illum inates these textual veils by reading a
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double motion. On the one hand, prophylactic discourses are aimed at
containm ent and protection; on the other, they enable new representations
and plots of female bodies and desires. By examining how B ritish culture
and novels moved away from propriety toward more explicit references to
contraceptives, I hope to illustrate th at prophylaxis is a powerful theoretical
tool for illum inating women’s complex relationships to the literary texts
they produced and consumed.
LITERARY CHILDREN AND FEMALE PLEASURE
In 1750, Samuel Johnson hosted a party to honor Charlotte Lennox
and her first novel Harriot Stuart, a novel which he heralded as "Mrs.
Lennox's first literary child." The production of her first novel was to
Johnson, as a member of the literary establishm ent, Lennox's entry into
the world of "motherhood." For a woman to produce a text was for her to
reproduce— to copy and enter into a male tradition of w riting while
sim ultaneously fulfilling, in some sense, her socially sanctioned role of
mother. Lennox's act of w riting could not take place in any other terms:
when a woman sent a text into the world she was not merely creating
written words, but giving birth to a child. Thus the textual takes the place
of the sexual, but only insofar is it is already assumed by Johnson th at
Lennox can biologically reproduce. In other words, because she was a
woman, Lennox's biological ability to have children colored the way in
which Johnson's very influential literary circle could view her production
of a novel.
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Susan Stanford Friedman has noted th at, "the childbirth m etaphor
has yoked artistic creativity and hum an procreativity for centuries" (73). It
has been employed by male as well as female authors, but Friedm an is
correct in claiming th at the stakes of using this metaphor are not the same
for men as for women. Friedm an w rites: "The male comparison of
creativity with women's procreativity equates the two as if both were valued
equally, whereas they are not" (84). She argues th at when men deploy the
m etaphor they are engaged in the birth of ideas, thus reinforcing "the
separation of creation and procreation" (80). When women use birth
metaphors, they are speaking from biological possibility, but there is always
the danger th a t they are reducing them selves to the m aterial of their bodies,
and thus participating in a reductionist m aterialism that reifies the
separation of mind and body. When Johnson deployed the childbirth
metaphor about a female-authored text, he added yet another layer of
gendered associations. If, as Friedm an argues, "eighteenth-century male
birth m etaphors embodied |an | intertw ined disgust for woman and the
human body she represented" by valuing ideas and describing the body as
inferior, then Johnson's description of Lennox's motherhood can be read as
reaffirming "creativity as the province of men and procreativity as the
prim ary destiny of women" (85).
Johnson figures Lennox as a m aternal author, conflating her
creativity and procreativity. I want to argue th a t a theory of writing and
reading th a t separates process from product, pleasure from reproduction,
makes such conflations more difficult to assert. Literal and literary birth
control enable prophylactic discourses which negotiate this separation.
The possibility of literal and metaphorical birth control might have provided
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eighteenth- and nineteenth-century women w ith the ability to separate
pleasure from childbirth, while contraception m ight have provided one way
to divorce creativity from procreativity. More importantly, birth control
provides one context for reading the novel in order to renegotiate and
explore women's pleasure and the relationship of female pleasure to the
literary and biological products women have produced. I would argue th at
one th reat of birth control is th at it makes this separation viable and thus
very threatening. Birth control may have complicated the way in which
eighteenth-century society would have been able to read female desire. In
genteel company, for example, desire was found in the blush before
m arriage, and after m arriage was marked by pregnancy. But the
availability of birth control would have made it more difficult to figure out
exactly w hat kinds of pleasures women w ere experiencing. By extension,
deploying prophylaxis as a theoretical method for reading plots which may
have been taking place behind the veils of propriety can, as Foucault has
suggested, challenge the "strategic intention|s|" of discourses of control (8).
In this case, prophylactic theory helps to critique a cultural history which
has insisted upon collapsing women's pleasure with their ability to
reproduce or has discounted female pleasure altogether.
Such a reading strategy reveals th at the availability of birth control in
England during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries created anxieties
precisely because women could, potentially, separate their pleasures from
any physical, reproductive outcome. In The Family. Sex and M arriage in
England. 1500-1800. Lawrence Stone argues th a t the eighteenth century
saw the beginnings of this separation, so birth control knowledge was
allowed to circulate more freely than it had previously. Intercourse without
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reproductive consequences was a feature of some eighteenth-century
novels, usually w ritten by men, in which the male hero roamed the
countryside engaging in romantic interludes with pretty maids without the
mention of pregnancy.4 Occasionally children were produced by these
assignations but they were frequently passed over as only incidental to the
narrative. The question of birth control, a t least its literary representations,
was not really present at all. And the freedom of separation th a t Stone
alludes to— the increasing separation of Church doctrine from sexual
pleasure— was a much more complex and troubling "separation" than he
suggests. Stone's conception of separation takes on a more literal and
problematic meaning when he relates the diary of an eighteenth-century
woman who would rath er not have sexual intercourse w ith her husband
than risk another pregnancy. Sum m arizing her story, Stone concludes
th at the woman m ust not have had much sex-drive. He reads her words too
literally, thus disregarding exactly what is at stake in the difficult decision
this woman had to make. Regardless of sex-drive, this woman wanted
control of her body; contraception for her m eant complete separation. Not
having control of her body was too great a price to pay for sexual pleasure.
She obviously could not see, nor did she have access to, the new freedoms
Stone describes.
Ironically, the time that Stone characterizes as one of slackening
mores was the same period th at saw the publication of Daniel Defoe's
Conjugal Lewdness: or. M atrim onial Whoredom (1727) a diatribe in praise
'‘T his happens in Tobias Sm ollett's Peregrine Pickle (1751) and Henry Fielding's
Tom Jones (1749). In both novels, the heroes enter into sexual relations without the need for
birth control because, for them, it is a non-issue. Neither character will have to look after
the children they produce out of wedlock. This issue will be addressed in greater detail in
Chapter three.
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of happy m arriage and against sexual pleasure without procreation. Defoe,
like Stone, would have had difficulty understanding why the female diarist
m ight have wanted to create a physical distance between herself and her
husband. Defoe’s text is a combination of fictional anecdotes and political
polemic, the former used to illustrate the latter. The underlying them e of
the text is the notion th at there can be no happy marriage w ithout sexual
love, but th at there should be no sexual love without the issuance of a
tangible product of the union. Defoe's happy m arriage m ust produce
children or it is no better than the subtitle of his book: m atrimonial
whoredom. Marriage, Defoe asserts, is "at least the only, lawful,
established and regular means of Propagation of the species."
Additionally, it is "the only protector of character for a lady when with
child" and the only way by which "fwomenl are allowed, w ith Honour and
Reputation to bring forth children" (127). Indeed, Defoe captures the mores
of his tim e— the need for honor and reputation and the means by which it
could most frequently be protected: marriage. He seems to have a keen
understanding of, and sympathy for, the problems women face if
unprotected, and yet at the same time Defoe holds very conservative views
on m arriage. Defoe's m arriage looks like a contract whereby women enter
into a pact to reproduce. The women he writes about who profess no desire
for children are all married; the men who desire no children do not make
the same mistake. Thus women en ter knowingly into conjugal lewdness by
using the m arriage bed for pleasure. To Defoe, this is the most troubling
sin: "how then comes it to pass th a t People m arry th at would have no
Offspring? And from what Principles do these People act who m arry, and
tell us, they hope they shall have no Children? This is to me one of the most
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preposterous Things th a t I can think of in all the Articles of Matrimony"
(128). Adding "physical or diabolical" means to prevent conception makes
unreproductive m arriage an even more troubling form of legal prostitution.
If the aversion to children is itself described as "unnatural," then the
active prevention of children pushes the unnatural act one step further.
The woman who desires to abort her child is a "monster" and the means by
which she takes such action "devilish" (142). W hether taking preventatives
or inducing abortion, the m arried woman is deceitful and no better than a
prostitute. On the other hand, prostitutes are not condemned by Defoe for
using birth control because they have no m arriage contract and m ust
protect their wombs as part of their trade. All other women are committing
prem editated m urder and are whores in the worst sense of the word.
The question of utility versus pleasure is not one easily resolved.
Defoe would have women engage in the "pleasure" of intercourse only if it
produced children. If we tu rn our attention back to Samuel Johnson's
characterization of Charlotte Lennox’ s "literary child," we find th at the
product of literary production itself is not easily separated from the
hypothesized pleasures of reproduction. Johnson reads female production
as reproduction. Consequently, he assum es th a t even when women
produce a text they are reproducing. The only evidence of female utility
would seem to be th at which can be m easured in children. And if a woman
does not literally produce a child, when she writes she does so literarily.
Johnson's link between literary production and reproduction is crucial
because it evinces a desire to connect all w riting with the product of
heterosexuality. Johnson implies not only th a t a body is female because it
can reproduce; a body becomes female in the m aterial exercise and
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evidence of this reproductive ability.5 The question of birth control
complicates this easy relationship because a female body th a t produces but
does not reproduce, whose utility is not m easured in product but perhaps in
pleasure, would challenge the underlying assum ptions of Johnson's
rem arks. This separation of pleasure and utility is precisely w hat makes
Defoe so nervous.
Defining femininity, Freud postulated th a t production and pleasure
m ust be separated in order for a woman to achieve normal development.
Therefore, the product of reproduction-the child— takes the place of the
penis, th at which a woman most w ants and envies. Furtherm ore, the
product takes precedence over pleasure in Freud's plot of the family
romance sketched in Three Essavs on the Theory of Sexuality. As Mary
Jacobus argues, Freud's desire is to replace "sexual aim lessness with a
sexual purpose" (19). In such a formulation, any woman who values the
pleasure over the product is abnormal or perverse and already tends
towards prostitution. One hears echoes of Defoe's argum ent th at the
prostitute can use artificial means to prevent conception because it is her
trade to do so. But w hat happens to the body, the woman, who opts out of
production? Her perverseness cannot be called prostitution, yet her body
• ‘ ’In his essay "Novels and Children," Roland B arthes makes an explicit
connection between women's production of texts and their reproduction of children. U sing
Elle magazine as his point of departure, Barthes writes: "If we are to believe the weekly
Elle, which some time ago mustered seventy women novelists on one photograph, the
woman of letters is a rem arkable zoological species: she brings forth, pell-m ell, novels
and children. We are introduced, for example, to Jacqueline Lenoir (two daughters, one
novel); M arina Grey (one son, one novel); Nicole D u treil (tw o sons, four novels), etc" (50).
It seem s that women cannot be respected as authors unless they are also mothers. Women,
Barthes argues, are im plicitly told to "compensate for [theirj books by [their] children" (50).
In this way, the female author is not read as a social threat. According to Barthes, by
juxtaposing women's production and reproduction, the Elle piece suggests that women
might write, but "they w ill remain no less available for m otherhood by nature" (51).
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and her decision clearly confront the ideology of m aterial production. What
happens to female pleasure if consumed by (re)production? As we will see
in the discussion of Mary W ollstonecraft in Chapter two, this pleasure is
repressed or sublim ated. However, separating pleasure from product, a
separation enabled by contraceptives, suggests new ways to read women's
texts of sublim ation and m anners.
Contemporary feminist critics have spent a great deal of tim e
theorizing women's w riting and narrativ e pleasure in an attem pt to
renegotiate women's place within a male literary tradition. Recently critics
from Gilbert and Gubar to Julia Epstein have discussed the ways in which
w riting, for women, has been a seizing of power. The pen, in their
estim ation, is a phallus, the use of which dem onstrates authority.
Women's writing illustrates the ability to use the tools of the m aster to
create th eir own stories. For example, Francis Burney's iron pen, as
appropriated by Epstein, becomes symbolic of the difficulties of w riting and
the possible pleasure of overcoming such difficulties. While these
m etaphors have been useful in discerning women's relationships to male
writing, they are limited in the attention paid to the tool itself and offer no
alternative to the figuring of the pen, from its very beginning, as male and
thus available to women only as they appropriate it. The use of the
m etaphorical phallus would suggest th a t women cannot w rite ("conceive")
without the male seed; without first being inseminated so th at they can
indeed produce. This is a troubling form ulation because it leaves no room
for discussions of alternate forms of production or for an analysis of the
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phallus itself.6 By using the m etaphorical term s of male power, such
interpretations of women's struggles with w riting become nothing but
reproductions in the most literal sense: they are the feminizations of male
texts.
In "The Laugh of the Medusa," Helene Cixous offers an alternative
for women writers: writing w ith m other's milk. The figuration of ink as
feminine offers a powerful m etaphor for w riting which, at first glance,
seems to do away with the phallus altogether. Indeed, the tool for literary
power becomes, in this formulation, the woman's breast, not straig h t and
not shaped like a pen a t all. The breast is round, "feminine" and non-
phallic. Its status as feminine object does not seem to offer the same
problematics of power th at the iron pen invokes. And yet there is an .
assum ption which underlies this w hite ink: one m ust be a m other to
produce it. Since women only lactate after insemination, there is therefore
no ink without the penis. All w riters, metaphorically speaking, m ust be
mothers; they must be producers of literary children to be producers at all.
Similarly, Susan W innett's reform ulation of female reading pleasure,
G In Tlie Madwoman in the Attic (New Haven: Yale UP, 1979), Sandra Gilbert and
Susan Gubar do try to replace the phallus as metaphor with the uterus as the place from
which women write. In so doing, they attem pt to change the stakes of literary production by
suggesting the women create from their wombs and not from phallic authority. At the same
tim e, Gilbert and Gubar suggest a problematic, m aterial connection between female
production and reproduction. Because the uterus has no social status--it does not command
power in the same way that the phallus represents authority-wom en are reduced to nothing
but their bodies. In other words because the phallus is not the penis (as many critics have
argued) phallic authority permits men to perform a range of powerful social acts. On the
other hand, because a uterus is always a u teru s-u sed for producing children and not as the
site of social authority-an economy of uterine production can only suggest reproduction.
Hence, as Marianne Hirsch has pointed out, Gilbert and Gubar "see in m otherlessness the
emblem of female powerlessness" (44). The uterus has no authority of its own; rather it is
endowed with authority by being insem inated. See chapter one in M arianne Hirsch's The
Mother/Daughter Plot (Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1989), and Mary Jacobus's critique of
Gilbert and Gubar in Reading Woman ( New York: Columbia UP, 1986).
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"Coming U nstrung: Women, Men, N arrative, and Principles of Pleasure,"
relies on breast milk for one of its central m etaphors. Using the m aternal
body as a site of different reading pleasures, and in opposition to the male-
centered Oedipal model presented by Freud and Peter Brooks, Winnett
argues th a t female orgasm is "unnecessary." Indeed, in the male-centered
model of reading male pleasure dictates the tempo of the plot; its moments
of excitement are mapped out on the male body and in the language of
"significant discharge." W innett rightly points out th at this looks nothing
like female orgasm, and as such female pleasure is seemingly
unim portant. W innett suggests that contrary to this we might use the
m aternal body to bring women's pleasure into reading: "I want to explore
the different narrative logic— and the very different possibilities of pleasure--
th at emerge when issues such as incipience, repetition, and closure are
reconceived in term s of an experience (not the experience) of the female
body" (509). Of course, the central marker of difference is the ability to
reproduce and, for W innett, breast feeding and birth are the most
convenient m etaphors for woman's pleasure outside of w hat men can
experience.
W innett skilfully points up the flaws in the logic of Oedipal reading by
calling on essentialized female experiences as comparison. And she does
acknowledge th at this is one formulation of female experience, not the
experience of all women. Yet I find it troubling th a t the m arker of pleasure
is formulated in term s of motherhood; W innett th u s falls into some of the
same traps as Cixous in her theoretical attention to breast feeding. It
would seem th at women's narrative pleasure, a t its very inception, is based
on the potential for motherhood, and while W innett raises birth as a
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possibility, she does not fully engage it as a metaphor. Her reading of
Frankenstein suggests th at the novel's m aternal m etaphors are difficult for
the critic in th a t "The chain of monstrous acts th a t critics have so much
trouble accounting for within the traditional narratology seems to me to be
about the inability of a male scheme to account for something it refuses to
acknowledge" (510). By this W innett points to w hat formulations of male
narratology leave out or refuse to include, and yet she does not offer new
possibilities for the woman writer. The implied metaphor, which presents
a double-bind, suggests th at the narrative of female pleasure would only
seem to take place within the pleasures of "womanhood" fulfilled by
motherhood. As a critic, W innett is trapped in the discourse of m aternity.
Postulating birth as the beginning of narrative pleasure for women does
indeed change Brooks' formulation, but it assum es a problematic
dependence on reproduction. W innett assum es a dependence on the
potential of all women to be mothers and on our always scripted capacity to
produce literary children.
W innett's analysis begs a fundam ental question for my
investigations: does birth control negate female pleasure? Female pleasure
has been so closely associated with reproduction and childbirth that
separating labor from its tangible product~the child— is a vital step in
reading different representations of desire.7 Birth control is the tool th at
7Gayatri Spivak has written about women's literary/textual pleasure in terms of
the clitoris. In the final pages of "French Fem inist in an International Frame," Spivak
suggests that one way to excavate female reading pleasure is to "plot out the entire
geography o f fem ale sexuality in terms of the im agined possibility of the dismemberment
of the phallus" (151). In so doing, women might be able to recover the part of their body that
"escapes reproductive fram ing"-the clito ris-a n d reclaim pleasure. "Investigation of the
effacement o f the clitoris," Spivak w rites, "would p ersistently seek to de-normalize
uterine social organization" (152). See also Robert Scholes's essay "Uncoding Mama:
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enables such a separation. As a result, we, as critics, are required to read
pleasure's other representations. The readings th a t follow suggest th a t
birth control does not negate female pleasure; rather, birth control provides
clearer spaces for female pleasure and female production. But a theory of
prophylaxis can open this ground only if we move away from m etaphors of
childbirth, such as those sketched above, and if theorizations about w riting
are reform ulated to include a variety of ways to read pleasure. We m ust
read pleasures as they are literally represented in the plot— as w hat we can
literally read— as well as those which are implied by bringing historical
contexts to bear on our readings. Such speculative readings are difficult to
negotiate because we are asked to read w hat is there and not there at the
same time. This process of reading is sim ilar to the task th at eighteenth-
century women readers were asked to perform. They were im plicitly asked
by female authors to draw on debates about women's bodies circulating in
medical pam phlets, conduct books and in-home remedy m anuals in order
to become more discerning readers. They were asked to search behind the
veils of propriety in order to discover lessons about their own bodies and
their own possibilities for pleasure. One can read these lessons by
excavating two im portant historical moments: the advent of the condom
and the midwifery debates which raged during the early-eighteenth
century. Both examples help to illum inate the way in which prophylactic
theory operates, and the tenuous relationship women had to the male
medical establishm ent during my period of inquiry. Both suggest the
gendered spaces of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century B ritish experience,
The Fem ale Body as Text" in his collection Sem iotics and Interpretation (New Haven:
Yale UP, 1982).
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and both remind us of the urgency with which British society attem pted to
use the proper lady to control female behavior.
CONDOMS, MIDWIVES AND MEDICAL AUTHORITY
Deploying birth control as a tool for analysis helps to illuminate how
women's bodies have been constructed, and opens up the possibility of
reading the plots of female-authored texts in drastically different ways.
Such an analysis moves away from regulatory notions of female desire
toward an exploration of how such desires took place within social
prescriptions for female behavior. In other words, birth control enables us,
as critics, to move away from an analysis which looks only at restriction, to
theories which can postulate how women used social prescriptions to
facilitate their own plots. The condom, its functions and availability, helps
to illustrate how prophylactic theories function. As I have already said,
prophylaxis is a double motion which can prevent and enable
simultaneously. It can both contain and enable at the same time, and for
this reason it can be a powerful and transform ative method of reading. For
example, a condom can be both sexually liberating and socially restrictive.
Condoms might block the potential for birth, but they do not necessarily
change the discourses th at circulate about birth and women's bodies.
Condoms work in two ways at the same time: blocking reproduction, but
sim ultaneously enabling a discourse about the availability of women’ s
bodies for (male) sexual pleasure. In other words, the condom only acts as
control of reproduction; it has not yet literally changed the way that
women's m aterial condition is discussed. A condom m ight keep women
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from getting pregnant, but the always scripted potential for women to give
birth is still used as a subtext for m aintaining the dichotomy between body
and mind. Or, to use Susan Stanford Freidm an’ s term s, the condom helps
to m aintain the split between creativity and procreativity. Thus what a
specific woman's womb yields can be controlled, while seemingly
uncontrollable is w hat is generated as the construction of all women's
bodies. If motherhood is connotatively included as a defining
characteristic of womanhood, then to regulate one's own reproductive
potential is seemingly to define oneself; it is to suggest th at an individual's
body does not necessarily belong to the larger construction of women's
bodies. And yet, this sense of control is fleeting at best because it is
inscribed within a much larger economy of reproduction outside of an
individual's decision. Indeed, this control is p a rt of a larger cultural
discourse about women's bodies which always situ ates women as
(potential) mothers regardless of personal choice.
The condom is a useful example of possibility and impossibility
simultaneously because of its potential permeability; it materially
illustrates the double-motion of prophylaxis. This is especially true of
condoms th at were produced and used in the early eighteenth century. In
his study of reproduction and contraception, Reproductive Rituals. Angus
McLaren argues th a t we should discount the eighteenth-century condom as
a form of contraception since it was prim arily used for protection from
disease, functioning as a medical not a sexual prophylactic. Indeed, until
the vulcanization of rubber in the m id-nineteenth century, condoms were
neither mass produced nor constructed securely enough to prevent semen
from perm eating the m aterials from which the condom was made. It is
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thus unclear w hether or not condoms were effective as birth control,
though they were used and documented by Jam es Boswell who, in his
London Jo u rn al, describes the process of sheathing him self in "armour" to
protect from disease.8 Of one sexual episode he writes, "At night I strolled
into the Park and took the first whore I met, whom I without many words
copulated with free from danger being safely sheathed" (230-1).
Boswell used condoms while visiting prostitutes. This is the second
reason McLaren suggests th at the condom does not fully qualify as an
eighteenth-century birth control method. Condoms were considered
licentious objects that were used only by women of ill repute.9 Thus a
genteel woman would soon find herself with a reputation if she were to
suggest th a t a man visiting her should be sheathed, even if th a t man were
her husband. In other words, to ask for a condom as protection would be
sim ilar to adm itting th at she was not pure. McLaren thus points to the
difficulties th at the condom presented, especially to a woman who wanted to
protect herself. However, in The Birth Controllers. Peter Fryer reports that
the two prim ary vendors of condoms in eighteenth century London were
women, thus suggesting th at the condom was both viable and available.1 0
8While it would seem that Boswell uses condoms primarily for disease control, by
the 1720s condoms were also being uses to prevent "big Belly." Cf. Shirley Green's The
Curious History of Contraception (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1971): "It wasn't until
the 1720s that White Kennett, son of the Bishop of Peterborough, and later a rector himself,
praised the condom for liberating women from 'big Belly, and the squaling Brat"’ (81).
This would have been before Boswell's adventures in the park. Disease control created
birth control as a side effect thus protecting both men and women sim ultaneously.
9Cf. Boswell’s adventures with the actress Louisa reported in the London Journal,
especially the entries for 18,19 and 20 January 1763 (147-162). Because Louisa looks "pure"
and "innocent," Boswell has intercourse with her "unsheathed” and ends up with a
venereal disease.
10T hese women were Mother Lewis and Mrs. Mary Perkins; they were followed in
their trade by two women both called Mrs. Phillips. Fryer and McLaren both note that these
women were owners of brothels and thus had a specific investm ent in distributing
condoms. On the one hand they wanted to keep their customers satisfied and free from
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Though I agree th a t its use carried a stigma, the condom seems to have
been dispensed somewhat freely in London, advertised as both a protection
from disease and as a preservation of one's reputation. Fryer quotes an
advertising jingle which praises the use of condoms:
To guard yourself from sham e or fear,
Votaries to Venus, hasten here;
None in our w ares e'er found a flaw,
Self-preservation's nature's law. (29)
Both shame and fear are to be attended to, but most specifically the shame
and fear of discovery. While both venereal disease and pregnancy would be
a form of discovery, the stakes of intercourse were higher for women than
for men, who had only to fear becoming infected with a disease. Therefore,
preserving the self would require more than anti-venereal precautions.
Condoms were available in the m arket places of England and France
from the middle of the eighteenth century. For those who could afford it,
special condoms could be produced which would m eet a client's specific
needs. In his M emoirs. Casanova recalls having a box of very expensive
condoms made to order, designed to provide him more sensation during
intercourse. While it appears th a t condoms may have affronted the
sensibility of genteel women and compromised their reputations, they most
definitely offended the sensibilities of the clergy who believed in intercourse
for procreative purposes only. In July of 1992, Christie's sold a nineteenth-
century French condom a t auction. The condom was constructed of anim al
disease. On the other, I would like to suggests that the very fact that prophylactics were
distributed by women for use with women hints at a desire to protect fem ale bodies as well
as the bodies of the male customers. Brothel owners would have wanted to keep their girls
working and not pregnant. They also m ight have wanted to provide other women with the
sam e m eans of protection. The possibility o f women dispensing condoms to more genteel
women bears further investigation.
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membrane and printed w ith a satirical scene: a nun with her habit pulled
up to her w aist choosing her sexual p artn er from three men of the cloth.
Her criterion seems to be the size of their penis: all three are shown erect
and absurdly long.1 1 This detail of the print suggests th at the appearance
of the condom, which facilitated sexual libertinism , necessarily
contradicted the doctrines of the Church. The Church's position has been
the same for centuries, but lampooning religion on the face of a condom
would suggest th at the stakes of sexual freedom either were not taken too
seriously or were taken very seriously indeed. The position of the organized
Church was to urge a strict adherence to the doctrine of chastity. This
doctrine was passed on to women in England through eighteenth-century
conduct books th at almost without exception assert th at a woman should
stay modest and chaste, the two most virtuous qualities of a genteel woman.
Men were somewhat exempt from these m andates as a result of a sexual
double standard. In addition to acquiescing in a double standard, such
books constructed virtues as replacements for birth control. If a woman
truly stayed chaste, she would have no need for protection. And, if a
woman m aintained modesty, even after m arriage, then there was no
compelling reason why she should have access to birth control. These
assertions are based on the assumption th a t all the children produced
would be her husband's children and would be wanted. Though retaining
her modesty, a woman could fulfill her motherhood potential.
1JIn 1883 condoms with pictures of Queen Victoria were reported to exist in London.
This would have been as damning to the double-standards of British society as the
depiction of.nuns and priests would have been to the sensibilities of the Church and
religion. Decorating condoms had not gone out of fashion as of the late nineteenth-
century. The picture of the Queen turns the condom into a political as well as a sexual tool.
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Christie's auction catalogue traces the first appearance of the word
condom to Daniel Turner's 1717 work on venereal disease entitled Syphilis a
Practica. Both Fryer and the catalogue quote the following passage from
T urner’s text:
The condom being the best, if not only Preservative our
Libertines have found out at present; and yet, by reason of
its blunting the Sensation, I have heard some of them
acknowledge, th at they had often chose to risque a Clap,
rath er than engage com Hastis sic clypeatis [with spears
thus sheathedl. (Fryer, 25)
The question of a prescribed double standard is inherent in these lines.
Though Turner does not seem to advocate the use of condoms, he not only
freely admits to their use, but also alludes to other contraceptive practices.
At the same time he indicates, by implication, th a t condoms are needed
only by libertines. Turner's phrase carries with it connotations of
licentiousness and libidinousness, suggesting th a t Turner him self
understood th at the use of condoms as birth control would be considered
more risque than other culturally less challenging forms of family
planning such as coitus interruptus. The libertine-debauchee and rake--
was seemingly free from censure. Not th at his use of condoms was met
with approbation, but a libertine was never clearly and overtly warned not
to participate in the acts th at necessitated their use. Further, it was
implied th at sexual libertinism was becoming to a man, illustrating his
sexual prowess. A rake was warned of disease and not of the potential
danger to his reputation. Thus, T urner implies th a t such rogues are
interested only in their own pleasures and sensations; as a result, they
should not be surprised if they meet with a case of the "clap."
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The condom helps to illustrate, as does Eleanor Beare's case
discussed a t the beginning of this chapter, the gendered relationship
between birth control and social prescriptions for proper behavior.
Eighteenth-century debates about midwifery expose a sim ilar connection,
one grounded in anxieties about the kind of knowledge women were
perm itted to obtain. If women could act as midwives, and if birth remained
a wholly female space where only women were present, then society had no
way to regulate w hat went on in th at space. Therefore, social strategies
were enacted in order to w rest midwifery from women and construct birth
as a place for male, medical intervention. The eighteenth-century midwife
illustrates how birth control and knowledge about birth converge. The
danger of the midwife was not th at she could help women give birth, nor
th at she would botch a birth because of her lack of knowledge. The real
danger was th at she, like Beare, might have helped women regulate the
number of children they had. In other words, like Beare, a midwife could
help women to erase or defer pregnancy.
By 1671 when Jan e Sharp published her m anual of midwifery, The
Midwives Book, women's ability to act as midwives was under dispute. The
threat of male encroachm ent on the woman-only practice seemed to have
materialized. Sharp felt th at she had to begin her m anual not with an
explanation of the practice itself, but with a justification for women's claim
to the profession. Staking out women's claim to the profession seemed ju st
as vital an act as m aking sure th a t no more women would have to "endure
in the Hands of unskilful Midwives." In the introduction to the text,
subtitled "Of the necessity, and Usefulness of the Art of Midwifery," Sharp
writes:
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Some perhaps may think th a t then it is not proper for
women to be of this profession, because they cannot attain
so rarely to the knowledge of things as men may, who are
bred up in the Universities, Schools of learning, or serve
th eir Apprenticeships for th a t end and purpose, where
Anatomy Lectures being frequently read, the situation of
the parts of both men and women and other things of great
consequence are often made plain to them. But th at
Objection is easily answered, by the former example of the
Midwives amongst the Israelites, for though we women
cannot deny, th a t men in some things may come to a
greater perfection of knowledge th an women ordinarily
can, by reason of the former helps th at women want; yet the
holy Scriptures hath recorded Midwives to the perpetual
honour of the female Sex. There being not so much as one
word concerning Men-midwives mentioned there th a t we
can find, it being the n atu ral propriety of women to be much
seeing into th at Art; and though nature be not alone
sufficiently to the perfection of it, yet farther knowledge may
be gain'd by a long and diligent practice, and be
communicated to others of our own sex. (2-3)
Beginning w ith objections of ill education and concluding w ith the claim of
natural propensity, Sharp outlines the term s of a debate over birthing th at
will continue late into the nineteenth century. The claim of women's
knowledge as an essentially positive characteristic of the midwife is one
that held much currency in 1671 and it was asserted, by Sharp and other
female midwives, th a t if only women were perm itted access to the learning
that men were given, there would be little need for debate at all. Indeed,
Sharp contends that even men understand th at midwifery is the domain of
women arguing that, "the Art of Midwifery chiefly concerns us, which even
the best Learned men will grant, yielding something of their own to us,
when they are forced to borrow from us the very name they practice by, and
to call themselves Men-midwives" (4).
The debates over midwifery which began to rage in the early
eighteenth century had as much to do w ith the the encroachm ent of culture
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onto the normalized realm of nature as w ith the threatened possibility th at
there was a brand of knowledge being circulated from which men were
excluded. A very famous and oft-reprinted satirical depiction of a m an-
midwife illustrates the conflicted nature of the practice itself. Published in
1793 as a frontispiece to S.W. Fores' Man-Midwiferv Dissected, the print
portrays a figure split down the middle. The left side is a male, pictured
with riding crop, medical tools and potions used in his practice of
midwifery. The right side is a female, daintily clad pointing to the more
natural tools of her profession signified by her kitchen. The title is not
"Man-Midwife," rath er "A Man-Mid-Wife," a complex, trip artite
construction. The word "mid" appears directly in the center of the print, at
the body's dividing line. The hyphenated words are a reminder th a t the
male practitioner of midwifery was artificially constructed and not one of
Jane Sharp's n atural practitioners. More satirical than the representation
itself is the text directly underneath which describes this new medical
invention as an "animal" and a "monster." Because the most
compromising of all female experiences is birth, these words would surface
often in debates concerning male practitioners and female p a tien ts.1 2 For
a man to be present would compromise not only the act, but the m other's
virtue and modesty as well.
The appearance of this male practitioner signified an emergence of
radically different concerns about birth th a t did not em anate from disputes
1%n Uneven Developments (Chicago: U o f Chicago P, 1988), Mary Poovey
brilliantly analyzes of the use of chloroform in childbirth. Her reading of m edical reports
leads her to argue that chloroform was considered dangerous because it excited women
beyond th eir natural, lady-like dem eanors. The m edical "improvement" in childbirth
threatened the whole construct of the proper lady so that in addition to exhibiting animal
tendencies in the act of birth women also were led to exhibit animal passions that were very
troubling.
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about skill. As Sharp suggested above, borrowing women's name and
women's knowledge was a clear nod to the usurpation of power th at was
taking place. Following Sharp's observation, men should have understood
women's "right" to this profession. However, taking the name of the
female practitioner, and suggesting th at men could better understand the
regulatory character and complexities of the birthing process, eventually
enabled the man-midwife to phase out the perceived need for women
practitioners altogether. This move was not simply a way to make sure th at
a male was always called to the scene of a birth (whereas in the past they
only attended in case of emergency) but was also a way for the doctor to
insinuate him self into the medical treatm ent of the entire family. Studies
of midwifery note th at men entered the profession for financial reasons. A
man-midwife could command more money th an a female, especially in
w ealthier families where calling upon a male accoucheur instead of a
female midwife was the fashion. One might assum e th at when men
entered the field fees rose and the profession itself was elevated to a more
legitim ate status. One might also assume th a t when men began practicing
midwifery, especially in the urban centers, the practice became a
profession instead of a craft or occupation. Historically, this was not the
case. Women were not totally phased out, and the struggle to legitimize
midwifery continued into the early tw entieth century. In the early
eighteenth century, however, w hat emerged was a m ale-authored
campaign for proper training which played on fears of the female
practitioner, often linked to witchcraft in her practice. The rhetoric
explained th a t such fears could be laid to rest w ith a man-midwife.
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Accusations of w itchcraft were not uncommon in discussions of
midwifery.1 3 In the third year of the reign of Henry VIII, 1511, "An ACT
concerning Phesicions & Surgeons" was passed th a t began form ulating
standard qualifications for medical persons. The Act was specifically
addressed to those practicing "science," a "great m ultitude of ignorant
persons" w ithout the proper knowledge, establishing a process by which
none shall practice as a physician unless approved by the Bishop of London.
This appears to be a general decree, but specifically named are "Smythes
Wevers and Women" who
boldely and customably take upon them grete curis and
thyngys of great difficultie In the which they partely use
sorcery and which craft, partely applie such medicyne unto
the disease as be verey noyous and nothyng metely,
therefore to the high displeasure of God, great infamye to
the faculties, and the grevous hurte damage and
destruccion of many of the Kyng's liege, people most spally
of them th a t cannot descerne the uncunyng from the
cunnyng.
Though men are named in the Act, the link of female practitioners to
witchcraft invokes the image of a midwife. This image is especially called
up by the use of the term ignorant which appears frequently in the midwife
manuals. The witchcraft and sorcery is to "the high displeasure of God"
and thus not likely to be approved by the Bishop of London. Indeed, the
Church of England did have a hand in the regulation of midwifery, and
saw to it th at birth was done in accordance with the laws of God.
W itchcraft, of course, was deplored, even the hint of it. Thus when a
midwife attended a birth and it became clear th at the child would not
survive the delivery it was required th at the midwife cut open the uterus
1%ee Robert Erickson's Mother M idnight (New York: AMS P ress, Inc., 1986) for
an interesting discussion of the connection betw een m idwives and w itchcraft.
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and baptize the child before its death. This religious gesture was an
attem pt on the part of the midwife to stave off accusations of misconduct.
But the fear of w itchcraft being performed in conjunction with birth was not
easily laid to rest, even by processes of regulation. In their article "Of
Forceps, Patents and Paternity: Tristram Shandv." Donna Landry and
Gerald MacLean argue th a t at stake in the licensing of midwives was
"protection of paternal privilege and property-rights" which, it was feared,
could be disrupted by the midwife if she was left unchecked. Quoting Elaine
Hobby's Virtue of Necessity, they illustrate the requirem ent of a midwife:
Midwives were required to sw ear an oath which bound
them to ensure th a t no false charges of paternity were
brought, no babies swapped, hidden or killed and not to
assist at secret confinements (provisions designed to protect
primogeniture, dower rights and the life of the infant); to
make sure th at babies were properly baptised according to
Anglican ceremonies, and not to use w itchcraft or other
devilish arts themselves; and to provide their expertise
equally for rich and poor, not using a woman's pain in
childbirth to extort money from her th at she would not have
given freely. (530)
i
Even the character of the above oath could not fully divorce the midwife
from the list of suspicions. The endless potential for misconduct
constructed the midwife as a cunning, opportunistic woman, not as a
professional.
The suspicion of witchcraft was deeply held into the eighteenth
century. In his 1929 study of birthing rituals, "The Custom of Couvade,"
W arren R. Dawson documented the frequent examples of couvade, a
custom by which men were assum ed to experience childbirth. Dawson
presents examples from Africa, the United States and Europe to support the
existence of this ritual, a ritual th a t Dawson him self adm its we know little
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about. Dawson points to an example of a Scottish midwife th at illum inates
some of the anxieties about witchcraft and birth.
It was believed in Scotland, for instance, in the eighteenth
century,and probably later, th at the nurse could voluntarily
transfer the pains of childbirth from the mother to the
father. This introduces a new elem ent, namely, witchcraft,
but the couvade tradition is clear. Thomas Pennant,
w riting of his visit to Langholm, Dumfriesshire, in 1772,
relates th a t "the midwives had the power of transferring
p art of the primeval curse bestowed upon our first great
mother from the good wife to her husband. I saw the
reputed offspring of such a labour, who kindly came into
the world without giving her mother the least uneasiness,
while the poor husband was roaring w ith agony and in
uncouth and unnatural pains." A sim ilar practice has
been recorded from Ireland, where it was believed th a t the
pains of m aternity could be transferred from mother to
father by the nurse, who made magical use of the m an's
garm ents taken from him and laid on the mother. "It is
asserted by some th at the husband's consent must first be
obtained, but the general opinion is th at he feels all the
pain, and even cries out the agony, without being aware of
the cause." (61-2)
The question of consent in the above example raises im portant issues about
the place and responsibility of a midwife. It was suspected th at the midwife
had so much power while presiding over a birth th at she could perform acts
of w itchcraft without arousing suspicion. And, if a midwife could transfer
pain from wife to husband, then surely she could use this power in the
process of birth itself. Thus she needed no formal training, but her skill
was suspect. At the same time, there was a latent anxiety about w hat else
the midwife could do. If left alone among women, she could dispense
potentially im portant information about birth control potions and abortion
techniques. She could discuss the possibilities for impeding birth and
conception out of earshot of men. Because of this, her potential knowledge
struck a chord of discomfort in medical and non-medical men alike. The
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scene of b irth as a women's space threatened male control of information,
especially if we read this knowledge in light of Johnson's definition of womb
in his 1755 Dictionary: "to enclose, to breed in secret." That which takes
place "in secret" is th a t which most compromises w hat is perceived as the
social order. The midwife seemed to embody this secret: she could both
bring forth and prevent birth at the same time.
Of course, the assumption th a t the midwife would autom atically pass
on "secret" information about abortion or birth control if she were not
watched is not always valid. That the midwife would provide birth control
information was indeed a fear, and increasingly an excuse for the
regulation of midwifery. However, many continued to adhere to the belief
in the moral sanctity of life passed on by the Church and widely circulated.
And the assum ption th at a male practitioner would adhere more carefully
to Church doctrine is a false one. Though the stakes would be very different
for each sex in passing on fertility information, the misconception th at all
female practitioners would necessarily believe in this form of control
negates the strong hold of moral discourses. In England, women could
have gleaned knowledge about abortion and contraception from male-
authored texts which proffered potions for the return of the menses and
recipes for the inducem ent of abortion. These pseudo-medical pam phlets
and books aimed at women were printed during the seventeenth and
reprinted well into the eighteenth centuries, and though books like
Aristotle's M asterpiece were thought to be superstitious, the fact th a t they
went through several editions indicates a level of belief in pseudo-medical
knowledge. Such printed information made abortion advice available
without the midwife; thus she was not the only source of knowledge to fear.
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The Ladies Dispensatory, for example, published in 1652 and reprinted into
the eighteenth century, suggests th a t women should go through a series of
n atu ral rituals in order to cause abortion and sim ultaneously hinder future
conception. These rituals included drinking herbs, inserting leaves and
sticks into "the natural place of woman," wearing stones around the neck
and against the thigh and douching with herbals. One would not have
needed a midwife to learn and practice these folk remedies.
In A History of Contraception. Angus McLaren suggests th a t by the
eighteenth century people took less and less stock in such superstitious
remedies. At the same tim e he somewhat inadvertently hints at the fear
and the moral dilemma I articulated above. By the eighteenth century,
medical and contraceptive advances had progressed beyond the use of
herbals and stones, but there still existed the question of w hat went on
between women at a birth. In an attem pt to allay the suspicion th at all
midwives distributed abortion information indiscrim inately, McLaren
quotes a warning from the seventeenth-century French midwife Louise
Bourgeois to her daughter about the promulgation of such recipes:
This I do not speak th at thou shouldest refuse to give
Remedies upon ju st occasions: but to take heed how you be
cheated by subtle persons, who shall tell you fine stories of
the diseases of their Wives, or Daughters, which they may
say are very honest, hoping to get from you some Receipts to
effect their wicked designs. (160)
McLaren reads this as an obvious warning not to pass out information to
pregnant women, but there is clearly a question of who should have access
to such information, and not a dispute about the "Remedies" themselves.
W hat Bourgeois seems to be w arning against is not the wickedness of
abortion , but of abortion induced by men adm inistering to th eir pregnant
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m istresses. The "just occasions," one m ight assume, concern the passing
on of information to women, while putting such control into the hands of
husbands or fathers, and being tricked into such dissemination, is wicked
indeed. Conversely, to illustrate the sam e caution about giving information
to pregnant women, McLaren w rites th a t by the end of the eighteenth
century (medical) students were sim ilarly warned:
"We are frequently deceived," adm itted Jam es Gregory of
Edinburgh, "by women with child who, wishing to get rid of
th eir burden, produce a m iscarriage and attribute many
complaints to the cession of the menses, which they are
cunning enough to say happened many a month before"
( 160).
There is a clear gender distinction in these two examples which, though
juxtaposed, McLaren does not read. Taken together, these two moments
illustrate the shifting power over information which took place between the
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries as birth was increasingly moved in
the direction of the male doctor. Bourgeois is worried about her daughter
being tricked by men while the male doctor w arns about the "cunning"
woman. It would seem that the doctor fears more th a t the knowledge
escape him than w hether or not an abortion takes place.
What I am reading as the fear of knowledge seems to have taken
form most aggressively in accusations of ignorance. Jane Sharp's
argum ent for the need for knowledge took on a different tone in the midwife
manuals w ritten by men. Instead of couching their texts in term s of
education, such w riters were for the m ost part concerned with eradicating
the female practitioner altogether, believing th a t the art of midwifery
should be taken out of women's hands. Guillaum e M auquest de La Motte's
A General Treatise of Midwifrv. tran slated from the French and published
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in England in 1746, begins with an indictm ent of practicing midwives:
"There is room to wonder, that w hilst all the other branches of surgery
were carried to such a height, Midwifry fsicl should, till the beginning of
the last century, be entirely left in the hands of ignorant women" (iii). It is
clearly stated on the title page th at La Motte is "Sworn Surgeon and Man
Midwife," and as such qualified to make the observations th at will follow.
Instead of being a text organized for the education of a midwife, the Treatise
is a series of "observations and reflexions" gleaned from La M otte’ s years of
practice. They are all constructed to prove th a t he is not a member of the
ignorant group he condemns; indeed his credential as a surgeon outranked
the formal education of nearly all midwives. In addition, the examples are
put forth in a language which suggests th a t midwives should be medical
men, not untried women. In num erous instances La Motte discusses
having to correct the work of midwives, and cites instances in which he
was called to difficult scenes even though the women giving birth did not
want him to attend.
The thirteenth of September 1697, a lady th at lived near this
town, trusting entirely to a midwife who had been her
nurse, could not resolve to make use of a man, having an
unconquerable aversion to it. Having suffered for three
days and three nights the most violent pains, and her
strength and courage being exhausted, her mother sent for
me in haste, with her consent. I found her in a situation
ju st contrary to that she should have been in, with the head
and feet hanging down, the loins, hips and belly raised up,
and the child so far advanced th at its head appeared
outwardsly to the breadth of one's hand. I was told th a t it
had been two or three hours in this situation. . . I which 1
made me assure her th at her ill posture was the only cause
of this length of her labour. (177-78)
In his analysis, La M otte's correction of the midwife's m istake ensured a
safe(r) delivery.
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The fear of potential misconduct was always a t stake and threatened,
most m aterially, the female practice of midwifery. For this reason there
were frequently num erous women, called "gossips," present at a birth
attended by a midwife. In Midwives and Medical Men. Jean Donnison
suggests th at the "gossips" served numerous purposes. Ostensibly they
attended the birth to create a festive atmosphere, a feeling of celebration and
merrim ent. Often times this celebratory feeling would fuel rumors th at the
midwife frequently practiced her trade while drunk. Yet, the presence of
"gossips" seems to have served a necessary function, th at of validation. If
one is to read the word gossip with its tw entieth-century connotations, these
women were present to spread rum ors and observations concerning the
birth th at had ju st taken place. They were a community check on the
midwife and as such played a powerful role. If the midwife performed
well, it would be spread throughout the town. Similarly, if there were
problems or misconduct, th a t would also be reported. The presence of
female observers was a common occurrence because it was traditional for
friends and neighbors to be summoned at the time of a birth. Donnison
writes th at this fulfilled many needs ranging from support of the mother
during the difficult and often dangerous process to protection of the mother
if the child did not live. These witnesses could testify to the innocence of a
mother whose child died at birth, allaying suspicions th a t the mother killed
the child herself because it was unwanted (Donnison, 3). In either case,
women were given the role of m onitoring other women.
The gossips were expected to spread rumors about w hat went on at a
birth. At the same time, their information was construed as unreliable.
According to Patricia M eyer Spacks, "gossip" was an increasingly devalued
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form of reporting. By the middle of the eighteenth century, the term had
been redefined numerous times. Spacks reports th a t in his Dictionary
(1755), Dr. Johnson defined a "gossip" as a "tippling companion." His
third definition of the term connected "gossip unambiguously and officially
with women: 'One who runs about tattlin g like women at a lying in'" (25-
26). By 1811, the noun "gossip" designated both a person and "a mode of
conversation" (Spacks, 26). Therefore, the words of a gossip m ight protect
the women involved in the birth, but her words were not taken as a firm
guarantee th a t the midwife had ably performed her work. The observations
of gossips were discounted when discussing the possibility of licensing a
midwife. In 1647, Dr. Peter Chamberlen, whose uncle had been surgeon to
the Queen and the inventor of the forceps, in an attem pt to regulate
midwifery rem arked th at "on the testim ony of'tw o or three Gossips'. . . any
woman, however ignorant or cruel, who took the oath and paid her fee,
would be licensed to practise" (Donnison, 15). The establishm ent of
licensing practices had by 1647 been for some time in the hands of the
church, and Chamberlen, joined by other medical men, argued th a t it was
time regulation was taken away from the church and put into the hands of
the state. Such a move would potentially make it more difficult for women
to become licensed midwives for exactly the reasons Jane Sharp pointed to
in her book. The objection that Chamberlen raises above is to the education
of the midwife. At the time of his comment, it was not required th a t women
be proven experts in the field of childbirth. It was assumed, de facto, that
women, having given birth themselves, as most midwives had, were best
able to attend women in childbirth. Cham berlen's move toward regulation
was one of the first steps toward phasing women out of midwifery
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altogether. And his proposal of a midwife's society met w ith objections
from practicing female midwives who deplored his vested interests; they
argued th at this move was an attem pt to "assume control over them and
their livelihoods" (Donnison, 14).
The link between knowledge, information, power and the gossips is
significant in understanding the way in which midwifery became doubly
devalued by the time of the 1902 Midwives Act. The gossips, in particular,
were sent for a double purpose--that of having and blocking information
sim ultaneously. On the surface, a gossip is unim portant because her
position is to spread news th a t is instantly devalued or dismissed at the
moment it is uttered. It is taken from the realm of observation, and by its
source, turned into mere speculation or idle talk. Simultaneously, the
words of the gossip, because they are usually characterized as the words of
women, cannot ever fully be uttered or heard with validity. This link to
knowledge, such as it is embodied by the (female) midwife, presents the
same problems because her words and actions are suspect at the very
moment they are uttered or performed. Her lack of education, coupled with
efficiency, is more easily classified as witchcraft than as skill. And thus to
defuse the power of the midwife, one has to claim th a t her skill, or
"natural" right to such a practice, is unim portant because it can and m ust
be learned. This was the argum ent for medical institutionalization: that
which powerfully took place in the realm of women had to be made
"important" by being moved into the public sphere. In tracing the very
difficult path toward institutionalization, histories of midwifery fail to take
into account the very thing which continually held progress in check. As a
"science," midwifery and later obstetrics were devalued precisely because
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their patients were women. Even moving midwifery into the University
could not erase this fact which was determ ined in p art by the underlying
notion th at childbirth was n atural and not a science; an argum ent that,
when reversed, had been used to phase women out of the midwife business.
PLOTTING FEMALE DESIRE
Lawrence Sterne's Tristram Shandv (1761-67) and George Eliot's
Adam Bede (1859) illustrate the range of language used to explore the
gendered stakes of birth, birthing practices and birth control. Their
narratives of birth also help to illustrate the different gendered
relationships which regulated women's knowledge and feelings about th eir
own birthing experiences. Sterne's and Eliot's fictional renderings of
historical moments, for Sterne the midwife debates and for Eliot the
question of infanticide, also indicate that the gender of the author played a
part in their narrative constructions. The relationship of the authors to
their subject is, to some extent, restricted by gender. For Eliot, this
regulation took the form of the proper lady who had to hide her shocking
plot under m ultiple layers of symbolic language.
Sterne's Tristram Shandv stages the debate between male education
and female experience to enunciate the great anxieties about birth
circulating in the eighteenth century. Tristram 's birth is vexed from before
his conception because Mrs. Shandy, on th a t fateful night, lets her mind
wander away from the sexual act at hand to a more mundane question:
"Pray my dear, have you not forgot to wind up the clock?" Setting the
gender relations from the first page of the novel, Mrs. Shandy's disruption
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of Mr. Shandy and the subsequent speculation th at the "HOMUNCULUS"
was lucky to reach its destination at all, are said to determ ine Tristram 's
m isfortunes before his birth. Simultaneously, the scenes surrounding
Tristram 's birth are determ ined by the cultural debate about access to
reproductive knowledge and w hat qualifies as education. Its close attention
to this debate and the im portation of contemporary beliefs about midwifery
establish Tristram Shandv as the most fundam ental novel about birthing
practices. Indeed many critics have been drawn to this novel precisely
because of its use of historically specific m aterial to construct its narrative.
The central question at issue for my purposes is posed in the juxtaposition
of the "motherly" midwife and the "little squat, uncourtly figure," Dr. Slop
(41,123). Is the midwife called by Mrs. Shandy more able to handle
T ristram 's birth or should Mr. Shandy's choice, Dr. Slop, arm ed with his
medical instrum ents, be entrusted with the delivery? Or, more pointedly,
might it be th at the man-midwife is encroaching, uninvited and on the
basis of only one small pam phlet, into the bedroom? Sterne's satirical
construction of these questions makes it clear th at he believes there is no
such claim as natural access, while a t the same time there is no clear tru th
in medical discourse or practice. W hat is clear is th a t the ideas circulating
about birth break down along gender lines and repeat many of the already
circulating prescriptions for m ale and female participation.
There is a clearly dem arcated female space in Sterne's novel: the
bedroom. For most of the novel, Mrs. Shandy is upstairs in labor.
Meanwhile, the men are dow nstairs, intellectually discussing medicine,
and philosophy. Only incidentally do they notice the labor th a t is taking
place upstairs. This separation of space is emblematic of th e distance
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between birthing practices. By prior arrangem ent, Mrs. Shandy is denied a
trip to London to have her child. Because she had been taken to London
once under false pretenses, a false pregnancy, Mrs Shandy m ust have her
child in the country and chooses a country midwife to attend her. However,
the skill of this midwife is in question throughout the novel once it is
revealed th at the town preacher paid for her license as a convenience to
him self and at the insistence of his wife. This country midwife falls into
the category of "ignorance" to which de La M otte points. At the same time,
Dr. Slop is presented as equally ignorant. Forgetting his medical tools in
his haste to attend the Shandy house, Dr . Slop is presented as a bumbling
tinkerer--a quack who is lost without his bag of tricks. These characters
illustrate the two sides of the print discussed above: one reliant on
"nature," the other in need of tools. Finally, it is the Doctor who proves
most incompetent, crushing Tristram 's nose w ith his forceps, but not
before loud banging from upstairs necessitates th a t the doctor step in.
Landry and MacLean persuasively argue th a t the midwife and Dr. Slop
re p re se n t" a compromise between W alter Shandy's scientific
experim entalism and his wife's com monsensical empiricism" and as
such, "amidst the gendered languages of obstetric activity, Slop and the
midwife are introduced as m utually constitutive socio-technical agents of
Tristram 's birth" (526). I would agree th at this is the case, but I would
want to argue th at the gendered body giving birth is doubly marginalized in
the process. The body seems to fall out of the birth altogether as attention is
shifted to the instrum ents and the production of the child. The separation
of the female body for the utility of production is clearly marked even though
Dr. Slop is a menace. By this separation, Sterne privileges the space of the
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digression and the production of intellectual ideas. This is a space th at
women cannot occupy because th eir labor is unrecognized and takes place
upstairs.
W hat is so interesting about Tristram Shandv is not only that it
reconstructed obstetric debates, but also th at Sterne could write about
midwifery and birth a t all. Sterne constructs his novel by way of digression,
but not by way of innuendo. Sterne's ability to write labor takes place with
the freedom of literary production enabled, I believe, by the separation
between male and female production th a t is dem arcated in his novel. The
male anxiety about birth, illustrated both by Dr. Slop's ineptitude and
T ristram ’s own desire to re-tell his story down to the very fear of castration,
is allayed by Sterne's production of the birthing text. He puts forth what
might indeed be called an intellectualized birth, debated about, analyzed
and editorialized w ithout women. And though he suggests by his ironic
representations of medicine and science th a t all production is vulnerable,
Sterne's novel is not his literary child; to the contrary, Sterne's novel would
seem to represent the pure production of ideas. Enclosing within its pages
Mrs. Shandy's "commonsensical empiricism," Sterne inscribes the debate
about production in bold terms which silence women. Contrary to this
presentation, George Eliot's Adam Bede (1859) presents a much more
complicated and frequently unutterable relationship between women and
reproductive production. That which is boldly uttered in Sterne's novel
becomes more dangerous in Eliot's, w ritten through allusion because the
stakes of birth are very different. And while Sterne's novel highlights a
debate about who is better qualified to attend women at birth, Eliot's concern
centers on the pain and shame of giving birth at all.
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It is not until Eliot discloses H etty's "hidden dread" th a t we know
exactly w hat she and A rthur had been doing during their m eetings in the
woods. Indeed, though Adam had come across the two together, the extent
to which A rthur and Hetty were involved was still unclear. Their passions
take place in hand-holding and looks. W hat happens beyond the
description of the narrative is only revealed when Hetty's body gives her
away. Had she not become pregnant, there would perhaps have been no
dread, but her body's vulnerability creates a terror from which Hetty, young
and unm arried, does not know how to extricate herself. And the dread
itself is unclear until we hear later of H etty's crime. Hetty is accused of
killing her child, news which shocks her friends and family— all the more
so because the possibility of Hetty's becoming pregnant had not been a
possibility at all. Indeed, it is the body which is revealing and which
threatens to give Hetty's secret meetings with A rthur away. When Hetty
discovers th a t she is pregnant she seems worried most of all about
concealing her secret:
After the first on-coming of her great dread, some weeks
after her betrothal to Adam, she had waited and waited, in
the blind vague hope th a t something would happen to set
her free from her terror; but she could w ait no longer. All
the force of her nature had been concentrated on the one
effort of concealment, and she had shrunk with irresistible
dread from every course th a t could tend towards a betrayal
of her miserable secret. W henever the thought of w riting to
A rthur had occurred to her, she had rejected it: he could do
nothing for her th at would shelter her from discovery and
scorn among the relatives and neighbours who once more
made all her works, now h er airy dream had vanished.
(350)
Once Hetty no longer has the protection of her secret, her pregnant body
makes her vulnerable, open to scorn and terro r— immune to protection.
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Hetty cannot intellectualize this moment. Instead, she experiences a
dramatic emotional response th a t causes her to flee from discovery.
It seems no accident th at Hetty gives birth to her child in the home of
a character called Sarah Stone. Though the Sarah Stone w ritten by Eliot is
a tobacco vendor, there is a clear connection made to the real Sarah Stone,
midwife and author of the Complete Practice of Midwifery (1737). Stone took
up many of the causes put forth by Jane Sharp, including the education of
midwives. Stone was also a vehement defender of the skill of female
practitioners, arguing th a t while male critics were charging
mism anagem ent and ill education, more m others and children had died at
the hands of "raw recruits ju st out of their apprenticeships to the barber-
surgeon than through the worst ignorance and stupidity of midwives"
(Donnison, 31). Eliot's Stone becomes the key w itness in the trial against
Hetty, giving proof th at Hetty did indeed have a child and subsequently fled
the house with it. The midwife, for so it proves Stone is by her statem ent "I
didn't send for a doctor, for there seemed little need," becomes the informer
on the mother, the ultim ate "gossip" who proves th a t Hetty committed
infanticide (415). Indeed, by providing evidence for the prosecution Stone
fulfills her oath as a midwife.
It is the fear and confusion, both of exposure and of motherhood, that
is dangerous to Hetty. And unlike Tristram 's narrative of his own birth,
Hetty's fears are submerged into the realm of w hat cannot fully be uttered.
Hetty does not speak her own distress--it is narrated for her. Both her
reproduction and her production of speech are hindered by the need for
concealment. And it is only after the death of her child th a t she spends her
grief, not in explaining herself, but in asking God for forgiveness. Her
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words, having been stopped by the terror of discovery, are only utterable to
th at which is beyond signification, while Tristram 's doubts and the
opinions of his father and uncle are freely circulated. In addition, the
marriage status of Mrs. Shandy and H etty dictate very different
relationships to the birth of th eir children. Mrs. Shandy's legitimacy
enables Sterne overtly to discuss T ristram 's conception and delivery with
all of its accompanying complications. Because Hetty is not m arried, Eliot
could only allude to her sexual relationship with Arthur. It is only when
we encounter the evidence of sexual intercourse--the child— th a t Eliot can
fully reveal their relationship. T ristram freely participates in the narration
of his own birth while Hetty, out of fear and confusion, m urders her child to
ensure th at no evidence of birth rem ains. Even though Eliot was w riting
during a tim e of more liberal attitudes about female behavior, her gendered
relationship to the text she produced required a bit more caution than
Sterne's somewhat bawdy representation of childbirth w ritten alm ost one
hundred years earlier. Taken together, these novels indicate the high
stakes of reproduction, illicit female desire and the socially proper role of
female characters, both for midwives and potential m others.
In April 1874, a letter appeared in The Englishwoman's Review of
Social and Industrial Questions rem inding readers th at the question of
midwifery was still unresolved. In the tim e spanning T ristram Shandv
and Adam Bede, the same issues were still being played out, and the same
questions and concerns still being raised about access and skill. By 1874 the
British Medical Association had been established, but the question of
regulating midwifery had still not been resolved. Maria Firth, the author of
the letter, reminds us th a t the Association had begun "to consider the
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scheme of the O bstetrical Society for the education and regulation of
Midwives," the repercussions of which seemed to have been the relegation
of midwives to a "lower and more subordinate position than they even now
occupy." F irth sets forth the new definition of a midwife proposed by the
Association:
A respectable woman, able to read, w rite and calculate,
understanding the managem ent of n a tu ra l labour, and the
ordinary care of the mother and child after labour, and
capable of recognising any conditions requiring medical aid
during the parturient and puerperal states. (142)
If a midwife fails to meet this new definition she can be removed from the
register. As F irth rightly points out, this is a step backward for the midwife
and an indication of the ever encroaching m edical man. The implication is
that it would become punishable for a midwife to attend anything but a
natural birth; n atu ral means not medical. Yet by the time of this letter
women were increasingly becoming better educated in childbirth. They
still could not receive a medical education comparable to men's, but the
requirem ent th a t a midwife could only do w hat was "natural" was a clear
indication th a t her claims to the profession would not hold much longer, if
they had held at all. More women were applying for and receiving
registration from the Obstetrical Society (established in 1825) than ever
before, which created a unique situation. M ale midwives were beginning to
feel pushed out of the profession altogether. As more women were
registered, male practitioners who believed they had staked a firm claim to
midwifery felt this claim threatened. Thus the th re a t was coming from
both men and women. And yet the men had the authority to legislate
regulations, m aking the th reat more one-sided th an it would appear.
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The circulation of these debates and anxieties inflected the novels
w ritten during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Such anxieties
over access to knowledge and textual production were played out in novels,
midwife books, medical journals and political pam phlets, and had
repercussions not ju st on the medicalization of women's bodies, but also on
f t
women's proper role in society and th eir duties as mothers. As such, the
question of birth control is compelling in its inherent challenge to the
debates sketched out above. Birth control negates the need for medicalized
birth altogether. Simultaneously it most fully challenges women's expected
roles and suggests th at women's most essential of all possibilities is not the
only possibility. Because it makes the "secrets" of birth irrelevant,
separating product from pleasure and negating the expected place of .
women, birth control powerfully throws into flux the clear gender
dem arcations upon which culture operates.
The chapters th a t follow interrogate the links between pleasure and
product, between contraception and production. They investigate the
myriad ways in which eighteenth- and nineteenth-century women w riters
m anipulated already circulating discourses about "femaleness," propriety
and female desire as they were structured by the em ergent field of
eighteenth-century medicine. I use the history and concept of birth control
and the struggles for the control of birth to examine this dominant,
emerging discourse— medicine— and the ways in which it both literally and
literarily scripted ideals of womanhood, propriety, female authorship and
desire. Women w riters such as M ary W ollstonecraft, Eliza Haywood, Mary
Shelley and George Eliot used medicine and its "official" conscriptions to
suggest ways in which women could subvert social prescriptions for female
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behavior. The following is an investigation of how desires both escape and
work w ithin cultural plot(s) of female reproduction. By deploying birth
control and prophylaxis, the shield behind which desires could hide, I hope
to illustrate different ways to read novels of containment, especially female-
authored novels, which seem to suggest th a t women obeyed the restrictive
and proscriptive m andates of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century British
culture, while deftly negotiating alternative plots of female desire.
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Chapter 2
Mary W ollstonecraft's Prophylactic Politics:
Propriety as Birth Control
56
As I argued in chapter one, propriety was the most accessible
form of birth control available to British women during the eighteenth
century. Social rules of proper behavior and decorum were not explicitly
intended to operate as contraception; however, social prescriptions for
female behavior were implicitly m eant to govern all aspects of women's
lives, especially their sexual desires and appetites. The way a woman
was taught to behave— be she the heroine of a novel or a woman reading
conduct m anuals specifically w ritten for her edification— dictated th at
she follow strict rules for proper social interaction. Such rules of
behavior, the results of which could be read in a woman's countenance,
established a coded system of meaning. If a woman blushed at
appropriate moments, for example, she m ight be thought innocent or
virtuous; if she wore rouge, her virtue would autom atically become
more suspect. This coded system of female delicacy relied on w hat could
be seen as evidence of female virtue. Consequently, how a women
behaved externally had a direct correlation with w hat one might call her
"true" self; if a woman appeared proper and chaste, then she m ust
indeed be proper and chaste. Social position, virtue and chastity could
all be read through the visual marks of decorum. In the eighteenth-
century world of fashion, you were what you seemed.
Describing and reinforcing proper female behavior was a booming
industry, especially during the latter half of the eighteenth century. By
the time Frances Burney published her second novel Cecilia in 1782,
cited in the OED as the first recorded use of the word propriety to mean
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"conformity with good m anners," hundreds of books and pam phlets
concerned w ith female conduct had been published. Similarly, novels of
female education and sensibility were beginning to function as
fictionalized arbiters of taste, fashion and decorum, w hat Nancy
Arm strong has referred to as the "conduct book in fictional form" (108).
Gary Kelly has noted th at novels "purveyed information on m anners,
fashion, high society, public issues, the arts, 'proper' language and so
on to readers who would otherwise find it unobtainable" (8). In fact,
Kelly suggests, "even when this fashion system was being condemned in
some magazine or novel, readers were learning how the system
worked" (8). Readers were learning how women were expected to
behave, and the novel became an im portant way to dissem inate
information about proper social interaction. As C atherine Davidson has
argued, the novel "became a form of education, especially for women"
(10). Though presenting a "Fictional" world, novels such as Daniel
Defoe's Roxana (1724) and Samuel Richardson's Clarissa (1747-48) were
involved in the process of scripting moral and acceptable female
behavior, while Susanna Rowson's Charlotte Temple (1794). for
example, used the "slight veil of fiction" to "save one hapless fair one
from the error which ruined poor Charlotte" (xlix, 1 ).
In Class in English H istory. R.S. Neale describes the value of
women in eighteenth-century England. Men owned property, he writes,
while women's value was based on propriety: "the value stance expected
of women may be encapsulated in the word propriety-one might say th at
among the landed classes propriety was to women as property was to
men" (5). Propriety was a woman's social commodity; in tu rn , a m an's
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social value was increased as his wife's propriety added to the value of
his property. Of course, one had to know how to read propriety in order
to determ ine its "proper" value; one had to be able to determine, for
example, real virtue from dissim ulation. The use of rouge, alluded to
above, is a perfect example of dissim ulation because it can confuse the
boundaries between seeming and being. In Cecilia. Frances Burney
deploys the practice of rouging comically to critique the very notion th at
one can read a woman's "real" value by h er appearance. Upon her first
introduction to London society, Cecilia becomes an object of immediate
speculation. Her experiences of country life had "taught her to subdue
the timid fears of total inexperiences, and to repress the bashful feelings
of sham eful awkwardness; fears and feeling which rather called for .
compassion th an adm iration, and which, except in extreme youth, serve
but to degrade the modesty they indicate" (19). True modesty, we
discover, comes w ithout dissim ulation, and until one can illustrate
one's value through an unsubdued blush, one's nature will be suspect.
The men speculate on Cecilia's "nature" by attem pting to decipher her
face:
The men disputed among them selves w hether or not she was
painted; and one of them asserting boldly th at she was rouged
w ell, a debate ensued, which ended in a bet, and the decision
was m utually agreed to depend upon the colour of her cheeks by
the beginning of April, when, if unfaded by bad hours and
continual dissipation, they wore the same bright bloom w ith
which they were now glowing, h er champion acknowledged th at
his wager would be lost. (19)
A well-painted face, Burney implies, m ight be read no differently than a
face flushed w ith the excitement of London society. Our heroine, of
course, is chaste, even though her "glowing" face m ight enable the male
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characters to speculate otherwise. It is precisely the problem of
distinguishing the real from appearance th a t fascinates Burney. If one
could sim ulate decorum, pass off rouge for a blush, then one might be
able to use social codes as a shield behind which one could hide very
unacceptable behaviors. A blush usually m eant innocence, but as
M aria Edgeworth im plies in Belinda (1801), blushes are endlessly
interpretable. Discussing the heroine’s innocence, Edgeworth's
characters note very different meanings. "Miss Portm an's blushes
speak for her," claims Mr. Vincent, one of B elinda's suitors, while Mrs.
Freke claims: "Against her. . .women blush because they understand"
(208, my italics). Interpretation depended upon how well one could read,
or, to borrow G ayatri Spivak's phrase, "strategically misread" the coded
language of culture.
If, as I have been arguing, much of the "discourse" of propriety
was read in appearance, then m asking the appearance of impropriety
would be very im portant to a woman, especially one who wanted to
preserve her reputation while pursuing pleasures different from those
socially prescribed for her. If a woman wanted to do more than sew,
paint and sing— proper female accom plishm ents— she would need to find
ways of negotiating the strict codes of decorum. At the same time, she
would have to learn to hide any marks such negotiations might leave on
her body. One way of navigating the boundaries between propriety and
pleasure would have been to use the codes of decorum in order mask
such pleasures; to construct propriety as the shield behind which one
could, for example, have intercourse before m arriage, w ithout letting
the result or m ark of such intercourse become apparent to society. One
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could conceivably m anipulate propriety by playing with the distinction
between seeming and being upon which the guarantee of female virtue
relied. This could be an effective strategy; as the gentlemen in Burney's
novel discover, one has to wait m onths before really knowing w hether a
woman is rouged or in a more "natural" state. The same period of
waiting would apply to the discovery of one's impropriety as revealed by
the visual m ark of pregnancy. An unm arried pregnant body would
most materially and noticeably disclose the evidence of impropriety.
However, if one took away this sign of intercourse, it would become
much more difficult to read female chastity, especially if the females in
question seemingly adhered to overt displays of propriety. Propriety, in
other words, could function as a form of m asquerade as well as a
socially acceptable form of contraception.
In Fantomina. or. Love in a Maze (1724). Eliza Haywood deftly
skews the borders between seeming and being th at structured
eighteenth-century British society. Haywood's novel suggests th a t if a
woman knows how to m anipulate codes of meaning to conceal her
desire, she can exercise them with libertine freedom. However, she can
only do so until her body gives her away--until propriety, her social
contraceptive, fails. Haywood's nam eless heroine is a young heiress
from the country embarking on her first excursion to London. She
becomes enamored of the fashionable world, and one night at the theater
is especially intrigued by the relationships between the men of fashion
and the prostitutes they court. Determined to receive the same attention
given to these women, the heroine disguises herself as a prostitute. In
this guise, calling herself "Fantomina," she meets and falls in love with
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a young gallant named Beauplaisir. Because Beauplaisir believes th a t
Fantom ina is precisely as she appears, he does not anticipate any social
consequences from th eir relationship; Fantom ina appears in the guise
of a prostitute, therefore he is free to have sex without responsibility. But
Beauplaisir soon tires of Fantom ina. In order to keep his interest,
Fantom ina disguises herself as a maid, a widow and finally as an
incognita; Beauplaisir desires each in turn, and Fantom ina is able to
prolong their relationship and the satisfaction of her own desires. In so
doing, Fantom ina repeatedly performs herself in m asquerade. Terry
Castle and Ros Ballaster have observed th a t masquerade allowed
heroines a sexual freedom otherwise restricted to men. Castle suggests
th a t masquerade offered women a "kind of psychological latitude
normally reserved for men" (44). Ballaster concurs: "only the
m asquerade provided a sanctioned space for a lifting of restrictions of
women's social mobility" (188). Fantom ina's disguises authorize sexual
liberty, and her performances in genteel company secure her propriety.
Fantomina is afraid of social censure only after she becomes
pregnant. Until the visible effect of desire marks itself on her body,
Fantom ina is seemingly free to move in fashionable social circles and,
as Ballaster suggests, continually "'re-enact' the scene of seduction, to
return to the momentary power th a t the woman experiences in
courtship" (189). After she discovers her pregnancy, the heroine m ust
be more circumspect so th at her body does not give her away. Her
m other's visit makes such concealment quite difficult.
She found the Consequences of her amorous Follies would be,
without alm ost a M irracle, impossible to be concealed:—She was
with Child; and though she would easily have found the Means
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to have skreen'd even this from the Knowledge of the World, had
she been at liberty to have acted w ith the same unquestionable
Authority over herself, as she did before the coming of her
Mother, yet now all her Invention was a t a Loss for a Stratagem
to impose on a Woman of her Penetration:— By eating little,
lacing prodigious strait, and the Advantage of a great Hoop-
Petticoat, however, her Bigness was not taken notice of, and,
perhaps would not have been suspected till the Time of her going
into the Country. . .where she might be deliver'd w ith Secrecy.
(287).
If she had more tim e to author her own plans, Haywood's heroine would
have found some way to term inate her pregnancy, probably through
abortion. Instead, she finds a way to conceal it underneath her hoop
and petticoat.
Having successfully concealed her body, Fantom ina is allowed to
move freely in her mother's circle of friends. However, her body
ultimately gives her away while attending a ball at Court:
It was there she was seiz'd with those Pangs, which none in her
Condition are exempt from:—She could not conceal the sudden
Rack which all at once invaded her; or had her Tongue been
mute, her wildly rolling Eyes, the Distortion of her Features,
and the Convulsions which shook her whole Frame, in spite of
her, would have reveal’d she labour’d under some terrible Shock
of N ature.—Every Body was surpris’ d, every Body was
concern'd, but few guessed at the Occasion. (288)
Fantom ina's indecorous body belies her condition; a physician is sent for
and Fantom ina's pregnancy is revealed. The "terrible Shock of Nature"
turns out to be the most natural consequence of unprotected sex. It is
only after Fantom ina is forced to adm it her indiscretions th a t she
worries for her soul and cries "I am undone!" (289). Since she can no
longer m anipulate her appearance, she falls prey to social censure and
is banished to a convent. Fantomina is forced to reveal the father of her
child, but when she names Beauplaisir he denies all charges. Seeing
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63
the heroine for the first tim e out of disguise, he can honestly assert th at
he never had any intercourse w ith her. In the end, Fantom ina, though
banished, refuses to repent, and Beauplaisir is sworn to silence instead
of being punished. Haywood's gesture toward a moral ending ("I am
undone!") becomes a novelistic formality unable to negate the bawdiness
of the text or entirely condemn the behavior of the heroine.
As B allaster suggests, Fantom ina reverses the story of female
defeat at the hands of the male libertine (192). Instead, Fantom ina's
adventures help illum inate the negotiable and sometimes permeable
boundary between how one seems and who one is. Consequently,
Haywood's novel implicitly exploits the coded system of appearance th at
formed the basis of propriety and social decorum. Such a system, she
suggests, could be m anipulated to enable instead of govern female
desire. Working the system, using the masquerade of propriety as a
heroine's birth control, a woman could liberate, though fleetingly, her
sexual appetites. By suggesting th at the heroine could have "easily have
found the Means to have skreen'd even this [her pregnant body I from the
Knowledge of the World," Haywood gestures toward a more tangible
form of concealment beyond the appearance of decorum. At the same
time, decorum is positioned as the most viable form of contraceptive
available to the women who moved w ithin London's fashionable world.
Even when it failed, one could try to hide one's pregnant body beneath a
fashionable gown. This is precisely the th reat of Haywood's novel; if a
woman can m anipulate the codes of behavior in order to seem w hat she
is not, if she can conceal her actions by appearing to conform to strict
rules of social behavior, then there is no clear way to tell if she is a
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"proper" woman. In other words, there is no way to really read a
woman's virtue by reading her body.
By the time Mary Wollstonecraft penned A Vindication of the
Rights of Woman (1792) in the last decade of the eighteenth century,
there had been w hat Henry Abelove calls a "remarkable increase in the
incidence of cross-sex genital intercourse" in England (337). Abelove
tentatively suggests th at the increase can be read as having a direct
relation with the onset of the Industrial Revolution; the rise in
production, Abelove speculates, and the rise in reproduction, may be
aspects of the same phenomenon.
If I should be right in speculating th a t the rise in popularity of
sexual intercourse so-called in late eighteenth-century England
is an aspect of the same phenomenon th a t includes the rise in
production, then we should expect to find th a t sexual
intercourse so-called becomes at this time and in this place
discursively and phenomenologically central in ways th a t it had
never been before; th a t nonreproductive sexual behaviors come
under extraordinary negative pressure; and finally th a t both
developments happen in ways that testify to their relatedness,
even to their unity. (339)
Abelove's observation is im portant because it suggests th a t in response
to the increase in sexual intercourse, prohibitions against so-called
"nonreproductive sexual behaviors" would have also been on the rise. It
is possible to see this development in the history of the novel itself. The
sexual freedoms of which Haywood writes early in the century were
discursively transform ed into the increasingly moral texts of female
decorum th at appeared in the latter half of the century. Texts such as
Mary Hays's Memoirs of Emma Courtnev (1796) seem specifically aimed
at containing female desires by crafting moral tales th a t w arn women to
be wary of their too-consuming passions. At the same tim e, female
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novelists were lam enting the social double-standard th at kept their
passions so closely regulated. Hays's Em m a Courtney, echoing m any of
the sentim ents of Vindication, exclaims: "Cruel prejudices!. . . hapless
woman! Why was I not educated for commerce, for a profession, for
labour? Why have I been rendered feeble and delicate by bodily
constraint, and fastidious by artificial refinem ent? Why are we bound by
the habits of society, as with an adam antine chain? Why do we suffer
ourselves to be confined within a magic circle, w ithout daring, by a
magnanimous effort, to dissolve the barbarous spell?" (31). By railing
against and exposing society's sexual double-standard, novels were able
to dissem inate the kinds of information th a t m ight have enabled the
non-reproductive intercourse to which Abelove alludes.
When Mary Wollstonecraft set about critiquing what Hays calls
the "barbarous spell" cast by socially prescribed rules for female
behavior, she levelled her criticisms at the conventions of decorum. In
Vindication. W ollstonecraft argues th a t decroum is taught to women as
a substitute for reason. Consequently, women have never been treated
as rational or independent citizens; having been educated to "slavish
dependence," women's proper social role had been scripted for them by
gendered assum ptions about female "nature" (9). Women, have been
made to assum e an "artificial character." "Taught from their infancy
th at beauty is woman's sceptre, the mind shapes itself to the body, and
roaming round its gilt cage, only seeks to adorn its prison" (44).
Women, in other words, have been complicit w ith social prescriptions,
spending too much tim e learning to love th eir chains instead of trying to
reason themselves out of them. Caught in a society ever fearful of
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female appetites, yet one in which female beauty and allure were
frequently rewarded, women learned to internalize the codes of proper
behavior and to lim it themselves to superficial gratification. Instead of
cultivating women's intellect, society had tau g h t women to be vain and
to care more about their reputation than about w hat Wollstonecraft calls
true, virtuous behavior. "Strengthen the mind by enlarging it,"
W ollstonecraft argues, "and there will be an end to blind obedience" (24).
Teach women to use their minds, she suggests, and they will "become
virtuous by the exercise of their own reason" (21).
Knowing full well the great social investm ent in female
dependence, W ollstonecraft chose decorum as the place from which to
call for a "revolution in female m anners" (45). "It is time,"
W ollstonecraft suggests, "to separate unchangeable morals from local
manners;" tim e to separate the rules of decorous behavior from what
W ollstonecraft calls women's "nature" (45). "Sensualists" and "tyrants"
have been most instrum ental in encouraging blind obedience to
decorum by teaching women th at their most powerful asset is their body,
and th at by wielding their body women will have access to a small
amount of power. Ultimately, however, the sensualists "have been the
most dangerous tyrants, and women have been duped by their lovers, as
princes by th eir m inisters, whilst dream ing th a t they reigned over
them" (24). In reality, lording w hat W ollstonecraft might call "sensual
power" over a man is a fleeting power at best because it does not
encourage real love, real respect or real relationships. Most
im portantly, such bodily power does not foster w hat Wollstonecraft calls
true m odesty~a virtue more pure th an any affected through the rules of
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decorum. Real modesty, Wollstonecraft argues, is based on something
more than the codes of social interpretation. When women rely on
vanity and bodily enticements to keep a man, instead of on genuine
modesty and strength of mind, they subjugate themselves again and
again to m ale-centered ideals of female behavior, behavior th at demands
women separate their bodies from their m inds in order to gain the
respect of society. Conduct, constructed as the most im portant
indication of female virtue, keeps women from exercising real virtue.
By the time of Vindication. Wollstonecraft observes th at seeming had
become much more im portant than being, a reversal of values th at had
created a false consciousness within society. W ollstonecraft laments:
W hat necessity is there for a falsehood in conduct, and why
m ust the sacred majesty of tru th be violated to detain a deceitful
good th at saps the very foundation of virtue? Why m ust the
female mind be tainted by coquetish arts to gratify the
sensualist, and prevent love from subsiding into friendship, or
compassionate tenderness, when there are not qualities on
which friendship can be built? Let the honest heart shew itself,
and reason teach passion to submit to necessity. (31)
In following such advice women can become true companions to men,
their social equals, thus elevating the morals of all of society. When
women's strength of body and mind are no longer "sacrificed to libertine
notions of beauty" all of Britain will be stronger (10).
Decorum is so dangerous precisely because it replaces being with
seeming. If one is merely following formal rules of behavior, it becomes
much more difficult to "read" one's actions in order to discover the
status of one's virtue. Society can only read "local manners" because
"unchangeable morals" have been effectively displaced. Wollstonecraft
levels her critique of decorum a t the m oralists and conduct book w riters
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who were so instrum ental in constructing and reenforcing the rules of
social virtue. The subtext of this conduct m aterial was to m aintain a
split between male reason and female passion— between male minds and
female bodies. W riters such as Rousseau, Dr. Fordyce and Dr. Gregory,
all of whom made a business of policing female conduct, instructed
women to pay more attention to their bodies, leaving their minds to
"rust" (76). Quoting from each in tu rn , W ollstonecraft points out the
problems with their rigid, restrictive logic. Rousseau, for example,
suggested th a t women sacrifice everything to make themselves
agreeable to men. In order to do so, he asserted that "Iwomen | m ust be
subject all their lives, to the most constant and severe restraint, which is
th at of decorum" (82).1 Decorum, in other words, should govern female
submission, making women b etter companions for men. Rousseau
argued th a t such submission was best for women:
The first and most im portant qualification in a woman is good
nature or sweetness of temper: formed to obey a being so
imperfect as man, often full of vices, and always full of faults,
she ought to learn betimes even to suffer injustice, and to bear
the insult of a husband w ithout complaint; it is not for his sake,
but her own, th at she should be of a mild disposition. (83)
Male vices, Rousseau instructed, should be met with female patience.
In her comment, W ollstonecraft concurs th a t man is imperfect, but far
from suggesting the women obey men who lack virtue, she w rites th a t
"all the sacred rights of hum anity are violated by insisting on blind
obedience" (83). If decorum leads women into such dangerous
submission, there is som ething drastically wrong with the rules for
1 A11 quotations are from Rousseau's Emile, first published in 1762, and cited by
W ollstonecraft in V indication.
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good conduct. Rousseau's prescriptions for female submission do not
foster reason. Instead, W ollstonecraft asserts, Rousseau w anted to
establish a "male aristocracy" th a t would "leave women in a state of the
most profound ignorance" (87). Decorum had scripted female ignorance
and enabled a socially constructed and gendered inequality between the
sexes.
W ollstonecraft situates female "nature" in the place of male-
authored decorum. "A cultivated understanding and an affectionate
heart," she writes, "will never w ant starched rules of decorum" (98). If
women m ust rely on decorum to structure their behavior, "something
more substantial than seemliness will be the result; and, without
understanding the behavior here recommended would be rank
affectation" (98) Real female nature, as Wollstonecraft constructs it in
V indication, does not resemble the so-called natural construction of
women set forth by Rousseau and others; rather, it em anates from a
strict separation between dissim ulation and being— between the mind
and the body. The trouble with decorum is th at it replaces nature,
making dissim ulation the only possible form of female behavior. Put
another way, decorum erases women.
Decorum is to supplant nature, and banish all simplicity and
variety of character out of the female world. Yet w hat good end
can all this superficial counsel produce? It is, however, much
easier to point out this or th a t mode of behaviour, than to set the
reason to work; but, when the mind has been stored w ith useful
knowledge, and strengthened by being employed, the regulation
of behaviour may safely be left to its guidance. (98)
Instead of learning to think, decorum makes it possible for women to act
by proper rules without thinking. Women are told to conform to social
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70
expectation and to follow the "superficial counsel" dissem inated, for
example, in conduct literature. This negates the differences between
women. According to Wollstonecraft, it ”banish[es] all simplicity and
variety of character out of the female world," making all women appear
to be the same ideal called "woman."
Wollstonecraft vehemently rejects the "system of dissimulation"
called social decorum. The problem is th at "women are always to seem
to be this and that," and are never allowed to really be anything (99,
W ollstonecraft's emphasis). By levelling women's differences into the
cultural ideal of "femaleness," decorum enables the superficial world of
fashion to govern women's virtue. "All women," she w rites, "are to be
levelled, by meekness and docility, into one character of yielding softness
and gentle compliance" (95). This should not be women's role in society.
Instead, women should be taught to "respect them selves as rational
creatures, and not led to have passion for their own insipid persons"
(94). In order to effect her "revolution in female m anners,"
W ollstonecraft argues th at women should be weaned from the world of
fashion and decorum, weaned from the "pumped up passion" in novels
and high society, and taught to be sober, thoughtful and caring wives,
mothers and daughters. Only by letting reason get the better of
passions, only by letting "reason teach passion to subm it to necessity,"
will women be able to demand social respect. Ultim ately, "virtue shields
us from the casualties of life;" by situating women's virtue in reason,
Wollstonecraft is hopeful th a t her new ideal of female n atu re will allow
women to m aneuver more freely, confidently and independently in
British society (92).
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In order to construct her new, female ideal Wollstonecraft writes
herself into a logic of opposition: one m ust either follow decorum, or
discover w hat she m eans by female nature. If female nature is not
women as they are constructed in conduct books, then it might be logical
to assume th a t female nature would look as dissim ilar to propriety as
possible. In other words, it might appear th a t W ollstonecraft's
revolution would liberate the passions. In Vindication. Wollstonecraft
goes to great lengths to make sure th at her readers are not confused by
the way she uses the word passion. She continually asserts th at she is
not writing about romantic passions— these will always exist, though
they should not be the basis of any solid relationship between a man and
a woman. Instead, she addresses herself to a critique of the passions
th at celebrate the "puny enjoyments of life" (32). Lofty passions "are
spurs to action, and open the mind"; the danger is th at they sink into
"mere appetites, become a personal and m om entary gratification, when
the object is gained, and the satisfied mind rests in enjoyment" (30).
Because women have not been taught strength of mind, they appear to be
susceptible to the "mere appetites" passion creates. This does not mean
that women should be without passion, but it does seem to suggest th at
women need to police the lure to appetite by an exercise of their own
virtue. Women should not foster "a rom antic un n atu ral delicacy of
feeling" or "waste their lives in imagining how happy they should be
with a husband who could love them w ith a fervid increasing affection
every day, and all day" (33). Instead, by constructing for themselves a
"true" nature founded on reason, women m ight be able to negotiate a bit
of power w ithin the social spaces available to them . Women m ight also
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be able to exhibit sexual and intellectual passions without compromising
th eir reason.
In asking th a t women be taught to use reason to govern their
passions, Wollstonecraft does not appear to be denying women all
passionate pleasure. Instead she attacks the kind of female pleasure
th at leads women astray; she is addressing herself to the kind of passion
th at leads women continually back to their bodies as their only source of
social power. If beauty and ornam entation have, in effect, made women
powerless in the face of reason, then the entire system of education m ust
change so th a t women are given the power to experience different
pleasures: pleasures effected through reason.
In short, the whole tenor of female education (the education of
society) tends to render the best disposed romantic and
inconstant; and the rem ainder vain and mean. In the present
state of society this evil can scarcely be remedied, I am afraid, in
the slightest degree; should a more laudable ambition ever gain
ground they i women | may be brought nearer to nature and
reason, and become more virtuous and useful as they grow more
respectful. (75)
Bringing women nearer to w hat W ollstonecraft calls "nature," in
opposition to socially-constructed fem aleness, will make women's
passions more persevering. W ollstonecraft clarifies her position: "It is
not against strong, persevering passion; but romantic wavering feelings
th at I wish to guard the female heart by exercising the understanding"
(75). W avering feelings, such as the desire for a fashionable gown, are
too petty to occupy the female mind and detrim ental to female
understanding. In W ollstonecraft's schem a, the social obsession w ith
female dress and behavior is representative of all th at undermines
female reason: "[Women's! reason will never acquire sufficient
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strength to enable it to regulate th eir conduct, w hilst the making an
appearance in the world is the first wish of the majority of mankind"
(75). It would seem th a t the passion for appearance makes reason
impossible.
I propose, however, th at W ollstonecraft might be read as arguing
the very opposite of w hat she seems to argue. In "The O ther Reasons:
Female Alterity and Enlightenm ent Discourse in Mary W ollstonecraft's
A Vindication of the Rights of Woman." O rrin Wang makes a sim ilar
and very persuasive argum ent about W ollstonecraft's text. In response
to the passion versus reason debate and the politics of passionlessness,
Wang argues th at Vindication did not repress passion, but pointed to
places in which passion had been dangerously repressed. Wang writes:
"Wollstonecraft did not repress passion in favor of a repressive reason;
instead she attacks passion when it has been repressed, when it is not
allowed to become part of a lived experience, but instead is exploited as
the fuel for w hat amounts to a solipsistic, m asturbatory imagination"
(137). Wang reads Wollstonecraft's text against itself to suggest that
instead of repressing sexuality, Vindication is, in parts, a text th at
"warns against the repression of sexuality" (136). I w ant to extent
Wang's argum ent by suggesting th a t W ollstonecraft both points to
sexual and intellectual repression and to methods of negotiating
repressive social structures so th at women could experience th eir own
pleasures. In order to do so, women might have m anipulated the
socially readable signs of decorum and virtue— appearance and reason--
as a form of birth control.
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Instead of arguing th at a woman has to choose between passion
and reason, W ollstonecraft's discussion of decorum seems to suggest
th at passion can hide itself beneath the m ask of appearance, especially
if this appearance is created by reason. A ppearance does not make
reason impossible; rather, appearance becomes the very sign that
makes reason possible. This logical reversal, in which W ollstonecraft's
nature takes on the characteristics of social decorum, creates the mask
behind which passions hide. In W ollstonecraft's scenario, the "hoop
and petticoat" th a t conceal female desire is virtue, an ideal th at does not
come from dissim ulation, but "appears to be the n atu ral tendency of
things" (74). In contradiction to decorum, but seemingly in need of
decorum to make it readable, W ollstonecraft's virtue is figured as a
rewriting of propriety: it both reveals and conceals female behaviors and
desires. The difference is th a t such desires are reasoned through by
women, not fabricated for them by m ale-authored conduct books.
Instead of following Dr. Gregory's advice th a t women should keep any
learning a "profound secret," women should "follow the narrow path of
truth and virtue" to more "persevering passionlsl" (98). Hence, virtuous
behavior, as defined by its female practitioners, becomes the shield
behind which women's passions can be exercised.
Far from subm itting all passion to reason, and in effect erasing
the female body in much the same way th a t decorum erases female
difference, I believe th a t Wollstonecraft authorizes female desire in
direct opposition to romantic desire. Romantic desire has been handed
to women in pre-packaged forms, for example in novels, and it therefore
effaces real passion. Wollstonecraft suggests th a t rom antic descriptions
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of female passions actually effect a regulation of desire. Instead of
enabling women's passions through identification, rom antic
representation and the romantic notions of modesty and decorum
actually repress female desire. In contradistinction to such
repressions, W ollstonecraft w ants to liberate the persevering passions
bubbling below the surface of decorum. However, in order to do so she
had to suggest to her female readers ways to regulate and conceal the
effects of such passions in a world th at read decorum on the body. In
replacing decorum with w hat she calls female n a tu re -n a tu re th at
masquerades as the more readable signs of decorum— W ollstonecraft
suggested th a t women secret their desires, and the m aterial
consequences of those desires, behind the shield of virtue. As a result of
this logic of replacement, it is possible to read Vindication as a
contraceptive m anual, one th at taught women how to negotiate their
own pleasures in conjunction w ith social prescription.
Before I turn to an analysis of how Vindication might have
functioned, for its female readers, as a contraceptive text, I would like to
sketch, briefly, how Wollstonecraft has been read by tw entieth-century
feminist critics as well as how she was received by her contemporaries,
especially women w riters working after Vindication's publication. The
schism between recent feminist criticism and late eighteenth- and early
nineteenth-century readings of the text help point to some of the real and
imagined im plications of W ollstonecraft's politics. Similarly, reactions
to Wollstonecraft as a public persona in conjunction w ith her text make
it possible to locate Vindication's threatening subtexts and point to what
I perceive as the dangerous challenge of W ollstonecraft's politics in
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their late eighteenth-century context. This danger manifests itself in
W ollstonecraft's desire to replace decorum w ith women’ s nature, to
skew, in effect, the logical relation between seeming and being by
suggesting th a t women use reason to define th eir own "persevering
passions." Instead of scripting the proper mode for female behavior,
W ollstonecraft suggests th at women w rite th eir own scripts. As a
result, women will not "dream life away in the lap of pleasure" created
for them by social prescription; rather, they will be able to "assert their
claim to pursue reasonable pleasures and render themselves
conspicuous by practising the virtues which dignify mankind" (29).
Pleasure and passion are not w ritten out of W ollstonecraft's scenario;
rather, female desire is wrested from the sensualists and tyrants who
have defined "femaleness" and given back to women in the form of
reason. As we shall see, since Vindication's publication, both fem inists
and non-fem inists have found this a troubling proposition.
Contrary to my assertions about the place of desire in
W ollstonecraft's text, many tw entieth-century critics have suggested
that Vindication erases or displaces female desire by articulating a
troubled and troubling relationship between women and their bodies.2
Cora K aplan's argum ent is exem plary of th is position. In Sea Changes.
Kaplan puts forth perhaps the most definitive argum ent about
W ollstonecraft's politics in a tw entieth-century context by arguing th at
2See Mary Jacobus, Reading Woman (New York: Columbia UP, 1986),
Tim othy J. R eiss, "Revolution in Bounds: W ollstonecraft, Women, and Reason" and
Frances Ferguson's response, "W ollstonecraft our Contemporary" in Linda
K auffm ann, ed. Gender and Theory: D ialogues on F em inist Criticism (New York:
Basil B lackw ell, Inc., 1989), and Anna W ilson, "Mary W ollstonecraft and the Search
for the Radical Woman" (Genders 6. Fall 1989).
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Vindication offers passionlessness as the price for female independence
and social equality. In the chapter entitled "Wild Nights:
Pleasure/Sexuality/Fem inism ," K aplan argues th at Wollstonecraft
denied female pleasure, setting up "heartbreaking conditions for
women's liberation— a little death, the death of desire, the death of
female pleasure" (39). In so doing, K aplan suggests th at W ollstonecraft
situated women as perpetual objects of desire instead of desiring
subjects. Women m ight have had to separate themselves from their
bodies in order to reason, Kaplan argues, but in the process they were
still read as little more than the objects of male pleasure. Arguing that
W ollstonecraft accepted "Rousseau's ascription of female inferiority and
locate! d I it more firmly than he d| id I in an excess of sensibility," Kaplan
claims th a t Vindication was more repressive than the texts and social
situations it addresses (39).
I disagree with Kaplan’s assessm ent of Vindication for three
reasons. First, Kaplan is reading with a twentieth-century, fem inist
sensibility th a t explicitly cannot find liberation in Wollstonecraft's
reasons for teaching women to think. Because she wanted to educate
women in order to make them better companions for men, better wives
and m others, W ollstonecraft's project seems repressive from the outset,
especially when read in the context of a twentieth-century feminist
agenda. Instead of recognizing, as Gary Kelly does, th at Wollstonecraft
might have wanted to author female power in the limited sphere of
influence women had available to them — the family— Kaplan denies,
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outright, th a t such power is useful.3 Second, K aplan reads
Wollstonecraft's text quite literally, ignoring many of its contradictions
and disregarding w hat m ight be called the text's subtext. In other
words, though her argum ent about female passion is persuasive,
Kaplan's unwillingness to see w hat I am calling th e passion beneath
the surface (passion th a t surfaces in the early-nineteenth-century
caricatures of W ollstonecraft th a t I will be examining) makes her
position less convincing. Kaplan writes th a t instead of challenging the
"binding power of the binary categories of class sexuality"
W ollstonecraft "shifts her abstract women around inside them or tries to
reverse their symbolism" (48). While this is a valid point, it appears as if
Kaplan herself adheres to the very binary split— between reason and
passion-that W ollstonecraft wanted to negotiate. In so doing, Kaplan
denies the complexity of Wollstonecraft's text. Finally, by linking her
discussion of W ollstonecraft to a discussion of Adrienne Rich's
"Compulsory H eterosexuality and the Lesbian Experience," Kaplan
implicitly negates the possibility of any non-reproductive sexuality (here
lesbian sexuality). I hope to show that creating the space for non
reproductive desire is one of the stakes of W ollstonecraft's prophylactic
politics. Though this remains only a subtext of Vindication, it is one of
the reasons that Burney, Edgeworth, Polwhele, M artineau and others
chose to speak of Wollstonecraft as an over-desiring and fiercely sexual
philosopher.
3See chapters one and five of Kelly's Revolutionary Fem inism for a
convincing discussion of how W ollstonecraft empowered the traditionally fem ale
spaces in eighteenth-century society.
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When first published in 1792, Vindication met with mixed
reviews. As Gary Kelly notes, reaction depended upon the reviewer's
stance toward the French Revolution debate: "Those generally
sympathetic to the Revolution praised it; those opposed to the Revolution
had reservations or ignored it" (135-36). Only the Critical Review, a
conservative journal, attacked the book on the grounds th at it used
"vague, inconclusive reasoning, strung together with little a rt and no
apparent plan" (quoted in Kelly, 137). There seemed to be little public
objection, at least in the journals, to Wollstonecraft's program for female
education, and when the more liberal Monthly Review published its
review, the reviewer praised W ollstonecraft as a fine philosopher: "In
the class of philosophers, the author of this treatise--whom we will not
offend by styling authoress--has a right to a distinguished place" (198).4
In the Monthly Review's article, composed of lengthy quotations with
very little commentary, W ollstonecraft's text is positioned to speak for
itself. However, the implicitly male reviewer sets the tone by implicating
him self in Wollstonecraft's critique and affirming her position.
Positioning Wollstonecraft as the friendly aide sent to correct the social
errors th at have "retarded I the I progress toward perfection," the
4In "On the Reception of Mary W ollstonecraft's A Vindication of the R igh ts o f
Woman" (printed in Carol H. Poston, ed. A Vindication of the Rights of Woman [New
York: W.W. Norton & Co., 19881, 297-307), R.M. Janes provides a wonderful overview
of Vindication's critical history. Jan es argues that the post-revolutionary "furious
clamorings of 1798 quite overwhelmed the calm approbation of 1792 in both intensity
and duration" (297). Janes suggests that W ollstonecraft's novels, especially M aria,
and Godwin's Memoirs aided critics opposed to her agenda for female education by
"serv[ingj up a delicious evidence o f the consequences of Jacobin principles in action"
(303).
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reviewer appears to sanction Vindication's critique:
Inveloped as m ankind a t the present are with the m ists of
prejudice, and encumbered on every side with institutions and
customs, which prevent the free expansion of their intellectual
and moral powers, it is in the interest of private individuals, and
the duty of those who are entrusted with the care of the public
welfare, wherever, or in w hatever character, this divine
Instructress appears, to give an honourable reception, and an
attentive hearing. (198)
Everyone should listen to Wollstonecraft --"this divine Instructress"— for
the benefit of society. The reviewer himself is explicitly a member of the
"our" who might be offended by the idea of female education. However,
even those "jealous. . . of our right to the proud pre-eminence which we
have assumed" should realize th a t "the women of the present age are
daily giving us indubitable proofs th at the mind is of no sex, and that,
with the fostering aid of education, the world, as well as the nursery,
may be benefited by their instruction" (198).
While praising Vindication, the reviewer includes quotations th at
focus most specifically on transform ing women from fashionable objects
into better wives and mothers, citizens who are better able to take care of
themselves, their families, and the nation. Though not totally
neutralizing Wollstonecraft's more radical ideas— the review does quote
the possibly shocking idea th a t in m arriage women are "legally
prostituted"-the reviewer isolates Wollstonecraft's most palatable
politics, stressing female equality through education. But there is a
patronizingly liberal tone to the review, summed up in the reviewer's
conclusions about the author and the text. The w riter compliments
W ollstonecraft's performance: "It will be easily perceived th a t the
author is possessed of a great energy of intellect, vigour or fancy, and
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command of language" (208). "Pursued under the direction of good
sense and sage experience," Vindication may even "greatly contribute to
the improvement of the condition and character of the female world"
(208). However, there is one major stum bling block: the reviewer enjoys
being a part of the privileged "our" and is not ready to relinquish this
status.
We do not, however, so zealously adopt Miss W.'s plan for a
REVOLUTION in female education and m anners, as not to
perceive th a t several of her opinions are fanciful, and some of
her projects romantic. We do not see, th a t the condition or the
character of women would be improved, by assum ing an active
part in civil government. It does not appear to us to be
necessary, in order to enlighten the understanding of women,
th at we should prohibit the employment of their fingers in those
useful and elegant labours of the needle. . . Certain associations,
now too firmly established to be broken, forbid us to think that
women are degraded by the trivial attention which the men are
inclined to pay them; or it would be any increase of the pleasures
of society, if, "except where love anim ates the behaviour, the
distinction of sex were to be confounded." (209)
In other words, it is acceptable to educate women but not to change the
status quo. Though a favorable response, the Monthly Review discounts
W ollstonecraft's revolution; if change m ust come, it should, in general,
keep social relations the same.
W ollstonecraft's female contem poraries were as mixed in their
reviews as the journals. H annah More wrote to Horace Walpole, "I have
been much pestered to read the Rights o f Woman but am invincibly
resolved not to do it. . . To be unstable and capricious, I really think, is
but too characteristic of our sex; and there is, perhaps, no anim al so
much indebted to subordination for its good behaviour as woman."5
5Eleanor Flexner, Marv W ollstonecraft (N ew York: Coward, M cGann &
Geoghegan, Inc., 1972), 165. For a good, brief history o f Vindication's critical reception
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Speaking for all bluestockings, More insisted th a t they rejected "Mrs.
W ollstonecraft's wild theory concerning the Rights of Woman" (quoted
in Rogers, 213). O ther bluestockings were less critical; Anna Seward
called the book "wonderful": "It has, by turns, pleased and displeased,
startled and half-convinced me th at its author is oftener right than
wrong" (quoted in Flexner, 165). Mary Hays clearly embraced
W ollstonecraft's politics, evidence of which can be seen in Emma
Courtney's pleas for social equality above. And, as Anne Mellor has
suggested, even though in the 1790s "Hannah More, Priscilla Wakefield,
C atharine M acaulay, Mary Hays and Anne Frances Randall (Mary
Robinson) all advocated extensive practical and intellectual reforms in
the education and economic condition of women," Vindication is the
only "lastingly influential feminist tract of the period" (39)
Wollstonecraft, Mellor writes, had an influence on many, if not most, of
the female w riters who followed her.6
If she influenced the women who wrote after her, she was also a
difficult act to follow. Female novelists, M aria Edgeworth and Frances
Burney in particular, experienced a vexed and difficult relationship to
W ollstonecraft's politics. At best, Edgeworth's and Burney's
relationship to Wollstonecraft might be characterized as a love-hate
see chapter ten. Also see Katherine M. Rogers, Feminism in Eighteenth-Century
England (Urbana: U of Illinois P, 1982), chapter seven and Gary Kelly's
R evolutionary F em in ism .
6M argaret Lawrence captures the chaotic and varied reaction to Vindication
quite well in her 1936 book The School of Fem ininity (Port W ashington, N.Y:
Kennikat Press, Inc., 1966). She writes: "The book astonished England alm ost as
much as the French Revolution did. Men m ade a joke of it. Women bridled at it. The
woman m ust be a wanton. She m ust be a disgruntled old maid. She was neither, but
that did not matter to the people who talked about her. She must be. How otherwise could
she be saying it ruined women to have to get everything through men. It was an
astonishing book" (16).
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relationship, one of seeming avowal and disavowal. Critics have noted
th at this love-hate relationship might have been precipitated by the
publication, in 1798, of William Godwin's Memoirs of the Author of The
Rights of W oman.7 Godwin's Memoirs narrated all of W ollstonecraft's
most personal moments in great detail: her affair with Imlay; her child
born out of wedlock; her suicide attem pts; and her final illness,
including one very strange moment in which Godwin describes puppies
being brought to Mary's bed "to draw off the milk" she could not feed to
her newborn child (268). When Godwin published his memoirs, he
authored W ollstonecraft's persona as an unstable, emotional woman.
To late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century readers, the
unconventionality of her life-the seeming excess of desire and
consequent lack of reason— became w hat O rrin Wang calls "m arklsl of
Wollstonecraft's hypocrisy and limitation" (130). Even into the 1830s, the
perception of Wollstonecraft as a hypocritical and emotional women
colored reactions to her work. Gayle Yates notes th at the feminist
philosopher and social critic H arriet M artineau "raised her eyebrows at
M ary W ollstonecraft's personal sexual behavior and w hat she regarded
as her romantic excesses," while a t the same time "fully
acknow ledging| Wollstonecraft as the first English public advocate of
women's rights" (17). M artineau's relationship to W ollstonecraft's
work appears to be tempered by W ollstonecraft's persona. In her
7For discussion of how Godwin’s M em oirs affect/created W ollstonecraft's
persona see Elizabeth Brophy's Women's Lives and the 18th-Century English Novel
(Tampa: U o f South Florida P, 1991), Alice Browne's The Eighteenth-Century
Fem inist Mind (Detroit: Wayne State UP, 1987), and Janet Todd's The Sign of
Anerellica (New York: Columbia UP, 1989).
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Autobiography (1833) M artineau writes:
I never could reconcile my mind to Mary W ollstonecraft's
writings, or to whatever I heard of her. It seemed to me, from
the earliest tim e when I could think on the subject of Woman's
Rights and condition, th a t the first requisite to advancement is
the self-reliance which results from self-discipline. . . . but Mary
Wollstonecraft was, with all her powers, a poor victim of
passion, w ith no control over her own peace, and no calmness or
content except when the needs of her individual nature were
satisfied. (Vol. I, 399-400)
Wollstonecraft might have been the first woman in England to publicly
advocate women's rights, but Godwin's Memoirs left her female
contemporaries a troubling legacy.8
By the end of the eighteenth century, then, Wollstonecraft had
been transform ed into a specimen of female desire gone awry.9 The
passionlessness th a t Kaplan finds in Vindication was figured by
W ollstonecraft's contem poraries as an overabundance of passion. In
8 Martineau was not altogether correct in designating W ollstonecraft the first
public advocate for women's rights. In 1706, Mary A stell had made many of the same
argum ents about female education and independence in Reflections Upon M arriage.
Claiming that women had been made into the slaves of their own dependence, Astell
critqued what she called "natural law" and suggested that this so-called "natural law"
had been fabricated to protect a male-dominated social hierarchy. Astell's text is
sim ilar in method and m anner to W ollstonecraft's. This is especially apparent in
W ollstonecraft's critique of natural fem aleness which owes a debt to A stell's logical
argum ents. Eleanor Flexner, one of W ollstonecraft's biographers, suggests that
W ollstonecraft pleaded ignorance of m ost women w riters, especially fem inist authors,
who had preceded her. Reflections upon Marriage and Vindication are so close in
argument and style that it appears as if W olsltonecraft was quite aware of Astell's text
while writing her own. This relationship bears further investigation and analysis.
9 Mary Wollstonecraft's biographers have almost all attem pted to explain the
m echanism s by which W ollstonecraft was transformed from political philosopher to
desiring woman. On the development of the W ollstonecraft persona see Moira
Ferguson and Janet Todd Marv Wollstonecraft (Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1984),
Emily W. Sustien A different face: the life of Marv W ollstonecraft (N ew York:
Harper & Row, 1975), Ralph Martin Wardle Marv W ollstoncraft (Lawrence. KS: U of
Kansas P, 1951), Claire Tomalin The Life and Death of Mary W ollstonecraft (New
York: Harcourt Brace Javanovich, 1974), and Edna Nixon M ary W ollstonecraft: her
life and tim es (London: Dent, 1971). Gary Kelly discusses W ollstonecraft's persona
in Revolutionary Fem inism , as does Anne M ellor in R om anticism & G ender.
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85
effect, Wollstonecraft seemed to symbolize the "rights of woman" taken
to their most damaging, libertine extreme. She came to represent an
embodiment of the very woman whom she had critiqued: proof of the
belief that a woman's passions would always rule her reason. This is
the Wollstonecraft th a t Edgeworth and Burney both embrace and
distance them selves fro m -a woman grappling w ith self-control and
female "nature," while still prey to what Rousseau had called
uncontrollable appetites. The persona Edgeworth and Burney
caricature, in Belinda and The W anderer (1818) respectively, is one
whose life illustrates the dangers of too much (sexual) freedom.
Edgeworth's H arriot Freke and Burney's Elinor are examples of what
can happen if women follow their free-spirited desires. Both characters
make gestures toward the "rights of woman"; however, in both novels
these gestures are underm ined because the W ollstonecraft character is
not in control of her own passions. As we shall see, despite
W ollstonecraft's cautions in Vindication about "m asculine women" who
go "hunting, shooting and gaming," both Edgeworth and Burney
envision this m asculine woman as the end result of W ollstonecraft's
politics (8). In addition to the possibility th at Edgeworth and Burney
read the persona into the work, their fictional representations of
Wollstonecraft are, in part, a result of W ollstonecraft's attem pt to
articulate a separation between decorum and nature, a separation that
both novelists found somewhat unnatural. The consequence of
separating decorum from nature is that there are no proper rules
designed to keep women from acting like men. W ollstonecraft herself
had even suggested th a t women follow "the im itation of m anly virtues"
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86
in order to make themselves into more rational creatures (8). However,
her gesture toward "manly virtue" is fictionalized as the desire to act
and be like a man.
Edgeworth's H arriot Freke is a compelling character from the
outset. She prefers "masculine" pursuits to the everyday pettiness of
female behavior; she likes to wear men's clothes and to fight duels. A
clear-minded and forceful individual, H arriot always takes control of the
situations in which she finds herself. The contrast between her male
behavior and female body makes her an anomaly in Edgeworth's text,
ju st as her surnam e— Freke— makes it apparent th a t H arriot is being
positioned as a freak of n a tu re.1 0 Because she exhibits characteristics of
both genders, H arriot is perm itted freedoms not extended to Belinda, the
heroine. She is able to negotiate both the traditionally male and
traditionally female spaces of the novel, and her clothes indicate a
refusal to conform to patriarchal standards for female behavior. As a
result, she becomes the novel's spokesperson for female equality.
The chapter entitled "Rights of Woman" provides the clearest
indication th at Edgeworth was parodying Vindication as part of her
narrative project. In this chapter, H arriot comes to court Belinda and,
in effect, to rescue h er from the m arriage plot. The "rights" indicated by
the chapter's title are the rights to female desire. This is not, however,
desire in the traditional sense of heterosexual romantic passions th at
culminate in m arriage. Edgeworth implies th a t a woman's right to
1 (in Old English'Treke" was properly defined as "one eager for a fight," but in
common parlance "freke" w as a poetic synonym for man. Edgeworth, therefore,
clearly marks Harriet as "male." I would lik e to thank D avid Hayward for bringing
this to my attention.
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desire might be better figured in her desire to seek the company of other
women. In "Rights of Woman," H arriot strides onto the scene poised as
Belinda's suitor; she is ready to sweep the heroine off her feet and away
from the dismal tower in which she aw aits the hero. H arriot exclaims,
"I swore to set the distressed damsel free, in spite of all the dragons in
Christendom ; so let me carry you off in trium ph on my unicorn, and
leave these good people to stare when they come home from their sober
walk, and find you gone" (204). Having rescued the heroine and shocked
the rest of the characters, H arriot wants to ride off into the sunset.
Edgeworth does not provide H arriot with a unicorn simply to
m ark her distaste for horses. H arriot's unicorn has a symbolic phallus
which m arks its rider's lack. If H arriot really comes to court Belinda,
and if H arriot is the specter of the masculine woman, then she m ust
have a penis. The unicorn signals Edgeworth's staging of rom antic
love; the romancing of Belinda is found in the above scene between the
women and not in the outcome of the book where the heroine m arries
her predestined hero. Staging a romantic scene between women, with
an improvised penis, discloses the freakish danger of women's rights.
If the Harriot-Belinda scenario is a valid indication of the ram ifications
of Wollstonecraft's theories, then it would seem that bubbling below the
surface of Vindication was a desire for (a different kind of) desire,
especially for feelings and passions th a t might liberate women from the
m arriage p lo t.1 1 Edgeworth's H arriot Freke is not a woman who has
^Edgeworth's gestures toward lesbian desire become even more dam ning of
W ollstonecraft’s politics when one recalls W ollstonecraft's own aversion to
lesb ian ism expressed in V indication. W ollstonecraft argues that girls acquire "bad
habits" when they are "shut up together" at boarding schools or when they develop
friendships that are too close or too exclusive (165). When women live in too-close
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suppressed desire. N either is she a woman who exercises virtue as self-
control. Rather, mimicking W ollstonecraft's real-life passions, she
appears to be a woman whose freakish desires are out of control.
Edgeworth has both gone beyond and distorted Wollstonecraft's words by
personifying woman's rights as something out of control; she both
acknowledges W ollstonecraft’s contribution to the "rights of woman"
and distances herself from the supposed consequences of those rights.
As a woman author, Edgeworth would have been remiss in not alluding
to the work of a famous and powerful woman, one who, as Mellor has
suggested, paved the way for other woman w riters. However,
Edgeworth also felt the need to distance herself from this powerful
woman by mocking and exaggerating W ollstonecraft's m ost radical
ideas.
From this self-imposed distance, Edgeworth can articulate her
own thoughts on women's rights. For Edgeworth, female power is
domestic power. In w hat looks like a response to Wollstonecraft's
indictm ent of female education and the way women are cornered into
proximity, they are more prone to "acquiring nasty or immodest habits" (127). This
proximity also leads to the folly and vanity she critiques throughout V indication.
Indeed, women first learn subm ission and pettiness by spending too much time with
other girls: "In nurseries, and boarding-schools, I fear, girls are first spoiled. . . A
number of girls sleep in the sam e room and wash together" (127). W ollstonecraft’s
boarding school is a sexually charged place. Consequently, "women are. . . too
familiar with each other, which leads to that gross degree of familiarity that so
frequently renders the marriage state unhappy" (127). She continues: "Why in the
name of decency are sisters, female intim ates, or ladies and their w aiting-wom en, to
be so grossly familiar as to forget the respect which one human creature owes to
another? That squeam ish delicacy which shrinks from the m ost disgusting offices
when affection or humanity lead us to watch at a sick pillow is despicable. But, why
women in health should be more familiar with each other than men are, when they
boast of their superior delicacy, is a solecism in m anners which I could never solve"
(127).
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domesticity, Edgeworth writes:
Accomplishments, it seems, are valuable, as being the objects of
universal adm iration. Some accomplishments have another
species of value, as they are tickets of admission to fashionable
company. Accomplishments have another, and higher species
of value, as they are supposed to increase a young lady's chance
of a prize in the m atrim onial m arket. . . False and odious must
be th at philosophy which would destroy any one of the innocent
pleasures of our existence. . . Women are peculiarly restrained
in their situation, and their employments, by the customs of
society: to diminish the num ber of those employments,
therefore, would be cruel; they should rath er be encouraged, by
all means, to cultivate those tastes which can attach them to
their home, and which can preserve them from the miseries of
dissipation. (Practical Education, quoted in Hill, 59-60)
Edgeworth advocates a privileged space for the domestic, placing herself
against those who would erase the powerful potential of this space. She
implicitly distances herself from Wollstonecraft's politics, or a t least the
representation of her politics. Ironically, Edgeworth's concern for the
domestic illustrates th at there is not as much distance between herself
and Wollstonecraft as she might have thought. By connotatively
situating her Wollstonecraft-figure as the purveyor of desire and female
independence, Edgeworth overlooks the domesticity of W ollstonecraft's
text.
Frances Burney's W ollstonecraft-type character Elinor offers a
sim ilar reading of Vindication's excesses. C ontrasting The W anderer's
two female leads, Elinor and Ellis (the more appropriate heroine), points
to Burney's perception of W ollstonecraft's theories as radical and
destructive. Ellis is created to embody the subtitle of the novel, "female
difficulties." She is continually forced to turn to men for help and thus
exhibits women's dependence. Because Ellis, for most of the novel, does
not have a proper name (a proper name will be restored to her later in
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the text) she illustrates the different ways in which women are left
unprotected. Ellis's nam elessness retards her attem pts at
independence and self-sufficiency. She is accused of duplicity by those
in the novel who suspect her social status and is subjected unwelcome
advances from gentlem en. It is thus excruciatingly difficult, as Ellis
observes, for a woman to get along without the protection of a man:
how insufficient, she exclaimed, is a FEMALE to herself! How
utterly dependent upon situation - connexions - circumstances!
how nam eless, how for ever fresh-springing are her
DIFFICULTIES, when she would owe her existence to her own
exertions! Her conduct is criticised, not scrutinized; her
character is censured, not examined; her labours are
unhonoured, and her qualifications are but lures to ill will!
Calumny hovers over her head, and slander follows her
footsteps. (257)
Through Ellis, Burney suggests th at women are always left in a
dependent position— m isread and misunderstood. But it is the voice of
Elinor th at cries for female independence. Her cries do not simply
reveal the deplorable statu s of women, they also demand th at something
be done to change the status quo. Because of her outspokenness, Elinor
will not be rewarded with the same happy ending th at Ellis receives.
Elinor, a model of the new, independent woman, is intent upon
"throwing off the tram m els of unm eaning custom" and exercising her
own spirit and free will (138). Part of her exercise is the declaration of
her desires for the novel's hero, Harleigh, who is (of course) destined for
Ellis. Elinor's love and her quest for requital drive her mad and leads
her to attem pt suicide. At the scene of the suicide attem pt, Elinor
arrives veiled and dressed like a man, yet her h air hangs wild
emphasizing her M edusa-like appearance. Elinor "appeared in deep
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mourning; her long hair, wholly unornam ented, hanging loosely down
her shoulders. H er complexion was wan, h er eyes were fierce rath er
than bright, and her hair was wild and menacing" (339). Elinor, as a
menacing and threatening woman, will not censor her desires; instead
Burney depicts them as spiraling out of control. In the end, because
Elinor is seen as a threat to the symbolic status quo, she cannot and will
not be loved by a man. Pages after this scene, Burney uses Elinor to
proclaim fem inist concerns modeled on her perception of
Wollstonecraft's Vindication. Speaking to Ellis about her complicity in
women's oppression, Elinor states:
you only fear to alarm or offend the men - who would keep us
from every office, but making puddings and pies for their own
precious palates! - Oh woman! poor, subdued woman! thou a rt
as dependent, mentally, upon the arb itrary customs of man, as
man is, corporally, upon the established laws of his country.
(378)
Elinor's indictm ent is easy to ignore w ithin the narrative because of her
earlier hysteria; her lack of self- control renders her unbelievable.
It is no surprise th at both H arriot and Elinor appear in men's
clothing at pivotal points in each novel. In Vindication. Wollstonecraft
repeatedly invokes "masculine qualities" as the kind of virtue toward
which women should strive. Seemingly addressing critics who might
assert th at she wanted to make women into men, W ollstonecraft writes:
"It is a farce to call any being virtuous whose virtues do not result from
an exercise of its own reason. This was Rousseau's opinion respecting
men: I extend it to women, and confidently assert th at they have been
drawn out of th eir sphere by false refinement, and not by an endeavor to
acquire masculine qualities" (21). Women should not try to act like men
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but should be educated to be more like men in term s of their ability to use
reason instead of "false refinement." W ollstonecraft anticipates many
objections to her plans for female education, most of them addressing
the notion th a t educating women would make them less feminine.
According to the male-defined status quo, "[women] are made to be
loved, and m ust not aim at respect" because when they demand respect,
they are "hunted out of society as masculine" (34). Careful not to
advocate masculinity, but trapped by the same logic of opposites posed by
her separation between decorum and nature, it is difficult for
Wollstonecraft to articulate suggestions for female education without
seeming to impinge on the strict social prescriptions for male and
female behavior. Hence, any gestures toward female reason look
dangerously like the dem and for masculine behavior. When Richard
Polwhele crafted his parody of Wollstonecraft in The Unsex'd Females
(1798), he noted w hat he perceived as her nod toward masculine
behavior, mocking her "masculinity" as well as the unfem inine
behavior of other women writers. Polwhele attrib u tes Wollstonecraft's
masculine behavior to the lack of decorum.
See W ollstonecraft, whom no decorum checks,
Arise, the intrepid champion of her sex;
O'er humbled man assert the sovereign claim,
And slight the timid blush of virgin fame. (63-66)
Polwhele, as Katherine Rogers notes, even goes so far as to intim ate that
her death in childbirth was "richly deserved" (218).1 2
*% n a footnote Polwhele writes: "I know nothing of M iss W ollstonecraft's
character or conduct, but from the Memoirs of Godwin, w ith whom this lady was
afterward connected. . . How far a woman of such principles, w as qualified to
superintend the education of young ladies, is a point which I shall leave, to be discussed
and determined by the circles of fashion and gallan try.. . I cannot but think, that the
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Conduct book w riters cited the dangers of the masculine woman
as one reason why women needed to be governed by strict definitions of
femaleness. In his Sermons to a Young Woman (1766), Dr. Fordyce, one
of the w riters critiqued in Vindication, writes:
A m asculine woman m ust be n atu rally an unam iable creature.
I confess m yself shocked, whenever I see the sexes confounded.
An effeminate fellow, that, destitute of every manly sentiment,
copies w ith inverted ambition from your sex, is an object of
contempt and aversion at once. On the other hand, any young
woman of better rank, th at throws off all the lovely softness of
her nature, and em ulates the daring intrepid tem per of a m an—
how terrible! The transform ation on either side must ever be
monstrous. . . By dint of all assiduity and flatters, fortune and
show, a female man shall sometimes succeed strangely with the
women: but to the men an amazon never fails to be forbidding.
(104-5)
Fordyce's quotation raises some interested questions about the extremes
of female behavior. What would it mean to "succeed strangely with the
women?" Does this suggest th at the "masculine woman" m ight be able
to pen libertine doctrines for female equality? Or, does this mean that
the "female man," like H arriot Freke, would court other women, and
th at over-desiring women like Elinor m ight em barrass the m asculinist
social order by speaking out of turn? Fordyce's am azonian wom an-so
"terrible" and so "forbidding"— indicates his strong belief in the
necessities of decorum. If one follows the rules for proper, gendered
behavior, then one will be in no danger of crossing the borders between
the genders. Hence, if every individual stays in his or her properly
Hand of Providence is visible, in her life, in her death, and in the Memoirs
them selves. As she w as given up to her 'heart's lusts,' and le t 'to follow her own
im aginations,' that the fallacy of her doctrines and the irreligious conduct, m ight be
manifested to the world; and as she died a death that strongly marked the distinction of
the sexes, by pointing out the destiny of women, and the diseases to which they are
liable" (29-30).
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gendered place, society will not be visually assaulted by the "monstrous"
women Fordyce describes .
The fact th at Edgeworth, Burney and Polwhele all depict
W ollstonecraft as over-desiring and m asculine-Fordyce's am azon—
suggests th a t W ollstonecraft, in her actions and through her w riting,
defied Fordyce's definition of the n atu ral woman. Depictions of
W ollstonecraft as masculine also suggest th a t the fear of the amazon,
the "masculine woman," was much more horrifying than the visual
specter of an unsightly "unamiable creature." Edgeworth, Burney and
Polwhele read beyond the visible, and, in contrast to Kaplan, find in
Wollstonecraft and her text libertine desires and actions seemingly out
of control. Implicitly, this enabled them to argue th at the end result of
her politics would be female men: aggressive and possibly non
reproducing women. Such women would have confounded the until-
then easily readable distinctions between male and female behavior, and
might have m aterially illustrated th at seeming was not always being.
Edgeworth and Burney, in particular, read the separation between
decorum and nature as an invitation for un-regulated female behavior
and the negation of propriety. And, I would argue, they may have even
perceived th a t the most dangerous th re at of W ollstonecraft's politics was
th at she was offering women suggestions for regulating and defining all
of th eir own behaviors, including the regulation of reproduction.
Extended to their most logical extreme, W ollstonecraft's demands th at
women exercise reason gestured toward the possibly th at women would
control th eir own bodies. No longer the ornam ental attachm ents to male
property, women's own, newly revised propriety— real virtue— would
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become a viable form of contraception. In Women and Romance. Laurie
Langbauer suggests th a t for W ollstonecraft, "m aternity is crucially
linked to women's sexual experience— m aternity is sexuality's sign" (99).
Take away this sign, and it become increasingly difficult to read sexual
behavior.
I would like to return to my assertion th a t Vindication might be
read as a text about contraception by suggesting th a t Wollstonecraft
constructed her prophylactic politics in the gap between seeming and
being. Mary Poovey has noted th at, "just as a woman's modest
dem eanor actually disguises her essential sexuality, so a woman's
situation, her reputation or her countenance could dram atically
m isrepresent her character" (25). When W ollstonecraft articulates her
somewhat false separation between decorum and n atu re— false in th at
the new nature relies on the old rules of decorum to be readable— she
throws the visual codes of m eaning into flux. In so doing, she
illustrates th at the gap between seeming and being m ight be the place
from which women, m arried and unm arried, could negotiate the
exercise of sexual desire. Wollstonecraft's attention to virtue and
decorum skews the borders between seeming and being by calling for
new modes of behavior th at appear to be "real" instead of "artificial." If,
as I have argued, by the time of Vindication's publication seeming had
indeed become a way of being- a way of interpreting readable social
behavior-then by asking women to seem more reasonable, it can be
argued th at Wollstonecraft constructs a more flexible system of visual
interpretation. This system both deplores and relies upon
dissim ulation; it depends upon the guarantee th at a woman will exhibit
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proper, social behavior, while at the same tim e acknowledging th at this
masquerade of propriety hides potential impropriety. Therefore, if
women reasonably author their own image— constructing themselves for
public consumption— there is no visual sign to indicate th at a woman is
something other th an w hat she seems. Consequently, Wollstonecraft's
flexible system of visual interpretation gestures toward both literal and
figurative methods of contraception by teaching women how to negotiate
the visible. On the one hand, she offers women the shield of virtue; on
the other, we shall see th a t she suggests more literal ways to control
fertility, especially if propriety fails.
In W ollstonecraft's scenario, propriety— sometimes called virtue-
-becomes a figurative way to conceal the signs of sexual behavior;
propriety acts as a figurative form of contraception. Wollstonecraft
makes this clear in her discussion of the distinctions between modesty
and a good reputation. Society is focused, she argues, on the appearance
of propriety read in a woman's reputation. Such appearances demand
dissim ulation because a woman's reputation relies alm ost exclusively
on the guarantee of chastity. Chastity is itself a difficult guarantee
because it is a virtue th at can be read only by absence. In other words, if
there is no m ark on a woman's body to indicate th a t she has not been
chaste— for example, no pregnancy-then the rules of decorum dictate
that she be perceived as chaste. Wollstonecraft ironically suggests th at
women negotiate this system of seeming:
With respect to reputation, the attention is confined to a single
virtue— chastity. If the honour of a woman, as it is absurdly
called, be safe, she may neglect every social duty; nay, ruin her
family by gam ing and extravagance; yet still present a
sham eless front— for truly she is an honourable woman! (137)
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Since society already replaces true modesty with a false ideal called
reputation, women can present a sham eless front as the guarantee of
propriety. While it is clear th a t Wollstonecraft does not condone such
indecorous and passionate behavior, she does illustrate how women
might m anipulate visual interpretation to their advantage. If women
hide their appetites behind duty, they might enjoy a freer exercise of
such appetites. This position is subtly articulated when Wollstonecraft
turns her attention to gluttony and the French women who speak
indiscreetly of their indigestion. French women, she contends, "have
lost a sense of decency in this respect; for they will talk very calmly of an
indigestion" instead of more properly hiding this sign of unbridled
appetite (137). If English women were to read a lesson in this example,
they might become more discreet about their own appetites, learning to
hide their gluttony behind the veil of seeming.
In a sim ilar vein, W ollstonecraft rails against the "self-denial
I women 1 are obliged to practice to preserve their reputation" (140). If
women "respected virtue for its own sake," she writes, "they would not
seek for a compensation in vanity" (139). While Wollstonecraft seems to
adhere to a constant, unchanging ideal of virtue, her critique of conduct
literature preceding the chapter on reputation illustrates the seeming
impossibility of constructing such a static, readable ideal. And even
though she deplores women who are "slaves to casual lust" and whose
appetites make them "standing dishes to which every glutton may have
access," she sim ultaneously understands th a t women can exercise
representational power by deploying virtue as the shield behind which
desire resides (138). When Wollstonecraft speaks of self-denial, she
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gestures toward a system of seem ing th a t will enable rather th an
repress female desire. She does this by shifting the moral responsibility
of a good reputation from women to men, arguing th a t "the w ant of
chastity in men" is the m ain cause of "female weakness, as well as
depravity" (138). Until men become more chaste and are subject to the
same rules th a t govern female conduct, "women will be immodest"
(126). The burden of female behavior falls to men. In the same gesture,
Wollstonecraft carves a space for female pleasure by arguing for equality
of representation. Either all members of society should be chaste, or
they should all be perm itted the exercise of libertine vices; there should
be no social double standard. Society should not demand women's self-
denial as a way of policing the social order. Instead, women should be
able to author and experience desires to the same degree perm itted in
men. Wollstonecraft seems to suggest th a t if the social order does not
change to accommodate female desire, then women should use the
appearance of virtue to shield their behavior instead of exercising self-
denial. Women should exploit the system of seeming and being to their
advantage.
For Wollstonecraft, the most chaste and noble form of desire is
th a t which takes place in m arriage and produces children.
Reproduction is the "natural" m ark of desire, but only when such desire
is exercised within m arriage. The egalitarian family th at
Wollstonecraft sketches in Vindication is one in which both m other and
father exercise reason and modesty to govern their conduct. Instead of
falling prey to the "coersion established in society" whereby men are
perm itted personal freedom while women m ust adhere to the "arts of
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coquetry," W ollstonecraft argues for more equitable laws under which
"young men may choose wives from motives of affection, and . . .
maidens allow love to root out vanity" (6). As a consequence:
The father of a family will not then weaken his constitution and
debase his sentim ents, by visiting the harlot, nor forget, in
obeying the call of appetite, the purpose for which it was
im planted. And, the m other will not neglect her children. . .
when sense and modesty secure her the friendship of her
husband. (6)
Intercourse will be used for reproduction, w ith chaste appetites uniting
a man and woman in friendship.
While W ollstonecraft advocates sexuality for reproductive
purpose, she sim ultaneously offers m arried women a viable and literal
way to control their own fertility: breastfeeding. Women, she writes,
should not neglect th eir duties as mothers-. As an exercise of m aternal
duty, women should breastfeed their own children instead of sending
them to a wet nurse. Breastfeeding will strengthen the ties between
m others and children while also teaching women "enlightened
m aternal affection" (151). Wollstonecraft deplores women who weaken
their own constitutions, and sacrifice filial relationships, by sending
their children to nurse with a stranger. At the same time she indicates
th at this unnatural motherhood is part of the "slavish obedience" to
fashion constructed my men.
Would men but generously snap our chains, and be content with
rational fellowship instead of slavish obedience, they would find
us more observant daughters, more affectionate sisters, more
faithful wives, more reasonable m others— in a word, better
citizens. We should love them with true affection, because we
should learn to respect ourselves; and the peace of mind of a
worthy m an would not be interrupted by the idle vanity of his
wife, nor the babes sent to nestle in a strange bosom, having
never found a home in their m other's. (150)
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Rational women make better companions; good m others suckle their
own children. W ollstonecraft considers anything less a renunciation of
parental duty: "parental affection. . . scarcely deserves the name, when
it does not lead [a woman I to suckle her children" (152). The natural
duty of a mother requires th at she foster a filial bond. For
Wollstonecraft, this bond is cemented through breastfeeding, a
recurring them e of Vindication.
W ollstonecraft's insistence th a t women suckle th eir own children
explicitly speaks to m aternal responsibility while implicitly suggesting
how a woman m ight practice contraception. During the eighteenth and
nineteenth centuries, breastfeeding was thought to be a reliable way of
spacing births. Lactation was believed to have had w hat Lawrence Stone
calls a "contraceptive effect" on most women because it could induce
amenorrhea for up to eighteen months (52). According to Angus
McLaren, extended breastfeeding was used as a form of contraception
from the Renaissance well into the eighteenth century. Late in the
eighteenth century, British doctors were urging women to breastfeed in
order to strengthen and prolong the life of their children. As a result,
"their infant m ortality rate was lower and births— spaced by about twenty
months--more widely separated" than in other parts of Europe (162-63).
And in her study of m arital fertility and lactation, Dorothy McLaren
argues th at "it seems unlikely th at most women in pre-industrial
England were unaw are th at prolonged lactation reduced th eir fertility"
(25). McLaren reports th at in women who chose to breastfeed, "their
fertility lagged well behind their fecundity" (46). Wollstonecraft might
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have been making reference to this knowledge when she insisted upon
the importance of breastfeeding.
N ature has so wisely ordered things th a t did women suckle their
children, they would preserve th eir own health, and there would
be such an interval between the birth of each child, th at we
should seldom see a houseful of babes. (190-1)
By fulfilling her m aternal duty a woman could be control her own
fertility. Once again, contraception is figured in the gap between being
and seeming.
In Vindication. Wollstonecraft contends th at duty and virtue are a
m atter of perception. This is not to claim th at Wollstonecraft
unabashedly advocated birth control. Even though she gestures towards
"acceptable" ways to control fertility, she does not advocate the
destruction of a child once conceived. W ollstonecraft abhors women who
sacrifice parental affection to "lasciviousness" and "either destroy the
embryo in the womb, or cast it off when born" (139). Though she argues
that "the weak enervated women who particularly catch the attention of
libertines, are unfit to be mothers, thought they may conceive," her
claim th at "nature in every thing demands respect" implies th at post
conception, women should not abort a child (139). At the same time,
Wollstonecraft's attention to the separation between seeming and being,
and her desire to renegotiate the politics of decorum, suggest th at she
wanted to move women beyond self-denial into a more protected space of
female desire. While she does not define this space, she does suggest
th at women rely on virtue to defend them from "the casualties of life."
Because W ollstonecraft's newly defined virtue relies on decorum,
reputation and propriety to make it readable--in effect conjuring up the
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very definitions of femininity against which she w rites-she situates both
figurative and literal contraception as seem ingly acceptable.
W ollstonecraft articulated a threatening proposition when she
demanded respect and independence for women. She suggested th at
women should be educated to professions and civil government— a
suggestion mocked by the Monthly Review— and, more im portantly, she
figured a new kind of woman to come. The new, reasonable woman
would have choices, would not necessarily have to conform to feminine
ideals, and would possibly, as her contemporaries envisioned, be a
brazen spokesperson for equal rights. Wollstonecraft m ight not have
envisioned Fordyce's "masculine woman," but because she was
perceived as advocating a libertine freedom in women, her politics
figure (by implication) non-reproductive sexual intercourse as one
consequence of female independence. In other words, women m ight
choose not to be mothers if they could also choose to exploit or ignore
rules designed to govern their conduct. The implicit threat of
W ollstonecraft's text is that if women no longer followed the proper rules
of conduct— if they were medical practitioners, law makers, w riters and
philosophers-they might become the aggressive and non-reproducing
W ollstonecraft-type bad women depicted in popular novels. Precisely
because she attem pted to skew the borders between seeming and being,
W ollstonecraft's politics explicitly challenged decorum's readable signs.
Finally, by suggesting that women deploy seeming in the place of self-
denial, Wollstonecraft offered women their own bodies w ith which to
w rite their own scripts of desire. As we shall see in the chapter th a t
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follows, Haywood makes a sim ilar gesture in order to articulate her own
version of prophylactic politics.
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Chapter 3
Protecting the Genteel Woman:
Body Doubles in Eliza Haywood's Miss Betsv Thoughtless
In A Vindication of the Rights of Woman Marv Wollstonecraft
suggested th a t women mimic the readable signs of propriety--
m anipulate the discourse of seeming— in order to conceal socially
unacceptable behavior. Eliza Haywood's prophylactic politics work in
much the same way, though in the place of seem ing Haywood
constructs foil characters to protect her heroine. Her narrative gesture
is sim ilar to Wollstonecraft's notion th at virtue was intended to protect
women from "all the casualties of life." Both w riters understand th at a
woman is most at risk of social censure and punishm ent when the
m ark of consumm ated desire is visible on her body. As this chapter will
argue, Haywood's scenario of female desire, much like W ollstonecraft's,
gestures toward literal and figurative forms of contraceptive. However,
unlike W ollstonecraft's politics, in the fictional world Haywood creates
desires do not have to hide behind social decorum. Seuxal desire and
passion are exercised by exploiting the prophylactic functions of the
other female characters.
Unknowingly, Bernard Mandeville plotted the preamble to this
prophylactic fiction when, in his his 1724 tract A Modest Defence of the
Publick Stews, he set about addressing the growing problem of
prostitution in London society. Far from arguing th a t the supposedly
immoral profession should be eradicated, M andeville articulated a
much more complex and ironic position. He suggested th at in lieu of
outlawing the profession, the government should round up prostitutes
and place them in public, governm ent-run "Stews." A four-tiered
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system of value would be instituted in which, for example, young women
would cost more than women who had passed their prime. Mandeville
suggested th at these "stews" would help to control the evils of w hat he
called "private whoring." The negative effects of this "private whoring"
directly threatened the maintenance of genteel London society. They
included contracting a venereal disease, killing bastards, m aking people
profuse or sexually excessive, and driving people to live beyond
themselves. Mandeville insisted th a t placing everything on a public
footing and in plain view would control the negative effect of
prostitution.1
In outlining a plan for his "Stews," Mandeville delineates the
principles of a socially practiced sexual double-standard th a t the
"Stews" would be constructed to keep intact. In doing so, he argues that
a sexually experienced man will make the best husband. The same is
not true for a woman, for whom chastity and a good reputation are
"rightly valued" (39). M andeville's conclusion: "Thus we see, by this
happy Regulation of the Publick Stews, th at Whoring instead of being an
Enemy to Matrimony, will advance and promote the Interest of it as
much as possible" (39). Couching his reforms in paternalistic and
protectionist terms, Mandeville reveals both the urgency and irony of
protecting the female sex. As was often the case with the satirists of his
day, there was just enough tru th in Mandeville's proposal for it to be
^See Charles Bernheim er’s F igures of 1 1 1 Repute (Cambridge, MA: Harvard
UP, 1989) for a discussion of others who made sim ilar proposals concerning the
legalization of prostitution.
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taken in a serious vein.2 Richard Cook suggests th a t "Mandeville. . .
seems quite seriously convinced by the m erits of his scheme. . . and his
satirically exaggerated pragm atism is designed not so much to
undercut th at scheme as to bait the tender-m inded reader" (v). It is
clear th at like other male w riters and satirists of his time, Mandeville
exhibits an awareness of how female value was discussed— as honor,
virtue and a good reputation. He cites these qualities as justification for
his argum ent, revealing a strong belief in honor and virtue even while
suggesting th at there should be women available for the most insatiable
and guilty male pleasures. Hence, even though Mandeville was
establishing a system of legalized immorality, his concern for the
chastity of genteel womankind played into the principles of protection,
upon which female virtue relied. His public stews would be erected for
the public good because they would cure social ills by preventing others.
The impulse to protect female chastity th at surfaces in
Mandeville's text is an im portant indicator of the social value placed on
female virtue. The most interesting part of Mandeville's treatise is the
value placed on the protection of w hat he calls the "modest woman."
^Swift’s A Modest. Proposal (1729) relies upon a sim ilarly ambiguous relation to
reality for its effectiveness. It is not within the scope of the present study to work out the
im plications of putting discourses of female sexuality in conversation with the strong
presence of male satire in the eighteenth century; however, it would be provocative to
pursue the possibilities of such a comparison. This move would help to illum inate the
conflict in the Enlightenm ent's commitment to reason and the high degree of play with
"grosser appetites." Such appetites place bodies under siege sexually and physically in
terms of food production. A study of the satiric relationship between women's bodies
and their sexuality (as perceived by male satirists) would begin to illum inate the gaps
between the upper-class production of satire and the recognition of disparities in access
to basic necessities. Satire by M andeville and Swift exposes such issues (with
differing degrees of in tentionality). Sim ilarly, Pope's "The Rape of the Lock” and
Rochester's "A Satyr A gainst Mankind" both suggest that highly conventionalized
flirting edges upon "private whoring," and that "rational man" is very near to
hypocritical decadence.
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107
This woman is as essential to society as whoring; indeed, in
Mandeville’ s formulation, the former cannot exist properly w ithout the
latter. W ithout regulated prostitution all women are sexually at risk.
As a result, the most im portant reason for establishing public whoring
is th at it will prevent "the debauching of the modest Women, and thereby
reduce Whoring to the narrow est Bounds in which it can possibly be
contain'd" (39). Mandeville earnestly subscribes to the belief that, "The
only way to preserve Female Chastity is to prevent the Men from laying
Siege to it" (50). Therefore, a steady supply of women of pleasure,
women who would act as figurative prophylactics, should keep men
from exercising th eir passions on innocent women. In turn, women
who have become immodest or unchaste have an obligation to protect the
modesty of others not already corrupted by desire. Mandeville writes:
For every Woman th at is debauch'd more than is barely
necessary, only brings so much additional Credit and
Reputation of the Stews, and in some m easure atones for the
Loss of her own Chastity, by being a Means to preserve that of
others. (65, emphasis added)
In other words, debauchery adds value to the stews while at the same
time protecting chaste women. Mandeville's rhetoric of necessity and
containm ent suggests a debauchery which takes place within strict
social limits; the desires he articulates should never be without limit or
beyond social control. Mandeville deals in regulated pleasures that, to
his thinking, do not ever challenge the propriety of m arriage or true
female virtue. For Mandeville, trafficking in whores guarantees th at
the "barely necessary" and "narrowest Bounds" are not crossed; in his
schema, the already debauched women, regardless of how she crossed
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the boundaries between "good" and "bad," should be m arketed as a
necessary, and controlled, protection.
In M andeville's scenario of London, the already debauched and
immoral woman has an obligation to protect the modesty of her more
virtuous sisters.3 W ithin this discourse of substitution, Mandeville
establishes an economy of prophylaxis in which the body of the
debauched woman stands in the place of, indeed protects, the body of the
modest woman. In this way, Mandeville's economy of prophylaxis
serves as an outline for w hat will become a common plot in many
eighteenth-century novels, a plot appopriated and m anipulated by
female authors. In these novels, the dangers and tem ptations of the
heroine are frequently played out on someone else's body. Thus
protected, the pure heroine can enter into m arriage w ith the hero. (The
hero may have adventures with other women w ithout harm ing his
reputation as long as he does not exercise his will on the body of the
heroine.) The bodies of other women frequently become the canvases
upon which life-lessons are painted for the heroine, m arkers of what
will happen if she does not protect the thing which is of most social and
narrative value: her virtue. Such body substitutions serve as a unique
form of birth control for the heroine-other women get pregnant for her,
3Mary Anne Schofield has noted that M andeville's proposal w as suspiciously
bent on preserving m ale pleasures at the expense o f wom en’s bodies. M andeville's
vision of the public good, she suggests, was in fact a m atter of the m asculine good.
U sing M andeville's own words, Schofield illu strates the seem ingly benevolent
impulse of the text: "the m ischief a man does in this case [through private whoring] is
entirely to himself; for w ith respect to the woman, he does a laudable action, in
furnishing her with the m eans of subsistence, in the only, or at least, most innocent
way that she is capable o f procuring it." Public whoring, therefore, would be for the
pleasures of men and the good of women. Schofield rightly reads th is as a
"condescending proposal," one that overlooks the wom en involved (186).
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are prostituted in her place, and make her social mistakes. O ther
women protect the heroine's body. Consequently, the reader is able to
see women's desire enacted while being reassured of the heroine's (and
perhaps by extension her own) chastity.
Protecting the heroine's body is the unexpected plot of Eliza
Haywood's The History of Miss Betsv Thoughtless (1751): unexpected,
because at first glance Haywood's novel seems to follow the formula of
other eighteenth-century romances w here the thoughtless heroine in
need of education receives it by following the advice of the thoughtful
hero.4 However, in Haywood's allegorical tale, Miss Betsy Thoughtless
will not be united with Mr. Trueworth until her body vicariously
experiences illicit love, unwed motherhood, attem pted abortion,
prostitution and m arital separation. Though Miss Betsy is subjected to
numerous tem ptations, and though several situations threaten to rob
her of her reputation, danger is averted by the bodily interventions of the
other female characters. Indeed, the n arrato r reminds us th at the story
is w ritten to avert danger and to correct Miss Betsy's one overt flaw:
vanity.
Though it is certain th at few young handsome ladies are w ithout
some share of the vanity here described, yet it is to be hoped there
are not many who are possessed of it in the immoderate degree
Miss Betsy was. It is, however, for the sake of those who are so,
th at these pages are wrote, to the end they may use their utm ost
endeavours to correct th at error, as they will find it so fatal to the
happiness of one who had scarce any other blameable propensity
in her whole composition. (68)
4A fine exam ple o f th is formula can be found in Francis Burney’s Evelina
(1778) where the young heroine m ust be educated, both socially and romantically, in
order to find happiness with the hero. Other novels that fit into the education of the
heroine plot include Elizabeth Inchbald's A Sim ple Storv (1791), Maria Edgeworth's
Belinda (1801) and Jane Austen's Northanger Ahbev (1818).
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Vanity m ust be controlled because it can lead a heroine dangerously
close to compromising her reputation. Even though she is vain, Miss
Betsy will not be fully compromised because the behavior of the other
female characters, in particular her friends Miss Flora and Miss
Forward, reminds her of the drastic consequences attached to a
w om an's indiscretion.
Haywood has constructed her novel as a book of lessons whereby
Betsy observes the indiscretions of Miss Flora and Miss Forward in
order to develop and exhibit her own truly moral positions. Though she
begins by being thoughtless, by the end of the novel it will be clear that
Betsy has learned the consequences of vanity, of being a coquette and of
toying w ith suitors (of whom she acquires many and keeps few). Miss
Betsv Thoughtless is about correcting a heroine's behavior by making
sure she is supplied with an ample num ber of bad moral examples.
Haywood's text dem onstrates how Betsy's modesty— supposedly a
"natural" feature of womanhood— is socially constructed. In effect, Betsy
begins as a blank page upon which are w rit the conventions of society.
At the same time, the narrator assum es th at Betsy is predisposed to
curiosity, pleasure and vanity and therefore m ust be carefully watched
and protected . Early in the novel, Lady Trusty, the wife of one of Betsy's
guardians, teaches a valuable lesson on virtue which will be echoed
throughout the book: "There are but too frequently proofs th a t an innate
principle of virtue is not always a sufficient guard against the many
snares laid for it, under the shew of innocent pleasure, by wicked and
designing persons of both sexes" (33). Miss Flora, Miss Forward and the
num erous men who populate the novel w aiting to ravish innocent
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111
women constantly remind the reader th a t a heroine's body is always
under siege. The difference between our heroine and the other, less
moral, women in the novel is th at they do not struggle to stay chaste;
rather, they give away their bodies freely. Consequently, these other
women perm it Miss Betsy to remain in control of her own body. As
Mandeville indicated, as long as there are unchaste women who will
fulfill a prophylactic role, the modest woman will be preserved. This
does not mean th at rakes do not try to assault Miss Betsy's virtue;
indeed, in the novel this happens to excess. It m eans th at Betsy must
have the strength and moral character to resist. Haywood continually
reminds us of Betsy's vanity, but she also takes great care in
constructing and m aintaining her virtue and reputation in opposition to
the sexual desire th a t the other women exhibit. Betsy knows desire, but
she is taught how to act prudently.
Miss Flora, the step-daughter of Mr. Goodman, Betsy's other
guardian, is an early rem inder th at allowing men to take sexual
liberties breeds moral turpitude. Towards the beginning of the novel,
Betsy discards a lover for his improper advances. At a dance, Gayland,
a potential suitor, passes Betsy a note suggesting an illicit encounter
complete with a coach to take Betsy to "a snug place" where they could
"pass a delicious hour or two without a soul to interrupt [theirI
pleasures" (17). When Betsy reads the letter she is filled with shame,
knowing th a t she has innocently encouraged G ayland’s advances by
flirting freely w ith him. However, she has not fully contemplated the
kind of discourse (both verbal and sexual) and indiscretion she has been
encouraging. After his offer is indignantly rejected by Betsy, Gayland
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turns his advances to Miss Flora, who accepts them as Betsy formerly
had done. The attention piques Miss Flora's vanity and helps to
establish an example for Betsy who, the n arrato r reflects,
saw, as in a m irror, her own late follies in those of Miss Flora,
who swelled with all the pride of flattered vanity on this new
im aginary conquest over the h eart of the accomplished Gayland,
as he was generally esteemed, and [Betsy] perceived the errors of
such a way of thinking and acting in so clear a light, as, had it
continued, would doubtless have spared her those anxieties her
relapse from it afterwards occasioned. (21)
This is one of many lessons th at will have to be repeatedly re-learned.
Later, when Betsy comes upon Gayland and Miss Flora locked inside the
latter's bed chamber, and spies on them through the wall, the lesson is
forcefully reiterated. She sees the couple "rise off the bed" together and,
as Betsy "hated any thing th at had the least tincture of indecency," she
clearly sees the results of too much vanity. In her estim ation, Miss
Flora has fallen into "shame" (38). Though Miss Flora claims they were
having an innocent conversation, Betsy is fully aware th at they were
pursuing baser pleasures.
Flora's negative examples continue throughout the novel and are
usually dependent upon the jealousy she exhibits towards Betsy, a
jealousy of which the latter is ignorant. Flora leads Betsy into
dangerous situations. One of their earliest life-lessons takes place on a
pleasure trip to Oxford where they visit Betsy's brother Francis
Thoughtless. Strolling in the park one day the unescorted women fall
into step w ith men claiming to be college fellows and friends of Francis.
When the men suggest adjourning to a cooler, more shaded place, the
women readily agree. However, when the women are taken to an out-of-
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the way inn, Betsy begins to get suspicious. She hides this feeling
because she is new to the rules of male-female relations. N either Betsy
nor Flora fully understands th a t the men begin "to form some
conjectures no way to the advantage of [theirl reputations," though upon
seeing the place to which they have been taken, Betsy exclaims: "Bless
me! this is fit for nothing but for people to do w hat they are ashamed of
in the light" (44-5). W hat follows ruins the women's reputations
throughout Oxford and brings about a duel between Francis
Thoughtless and the men responsible. Flora's suitor, "perceiving his
friend was entering into a particular conversation with Miss Betsy,
found means to draw Miss Flora out of the room and left them together"
(46). After they exit, Betsy is assaulted with "greater liberties than any
m an before had ever taken with her" (47). She has to fight her way free,
is finally rescued by her brother, and is found practically in a state of
"disorder." Francis interrupts a potential rape--a scene in which
Betsy’ s virtue was completely at risk.
The insult to Betsy is augmented by Miss Flora's behavior; she
leaves Betsy alone with the young student. The implication is th at Flora
w ent willingly to satisfy her own pleasures. This is suggested by the
narrator's wry observation, "that this young lady [Floral afterw ards
protested she called to Miss Betsy to follow" (46). Compounded by her
actions with Gayland, Betsy finds Flora's behavior deliberately
indiscreet and not at all befitting a heroine. This is precisely what
separates Betsy from Flora: the former is constructed as the heroine,
the latter as her foil. And w ithin the prophylactic economy of Haywood's
text, it is the job of the latter to protect the former, not to leave her
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1 14
exposed to the damaging effects of desire. The scene culminates w ith a
conversation between the two characters which illum inates both
women's positions. Flora pretends innocence, but Betsy sees through
her pose: "since you affect so much ignorance, I m ust tell you, th a t the
expectations of a second edition of the sam e work Mr. Gayland had
helped you to compose, though from another quarter, tempted you to
sneak out of the room, and leave your friend in danger of falling a to
sacrifice to w hat her soul most detests and scorns" (49). Miss Flora, the
narrator reveals, still has enough innocence to blush.
There are two distinct readings th a t can be gleaned
sim ultaneously from this adventure. On the one hand, Flora has
shirked her duties as implicit protector by leaving Betsy exposed to the
unwanted advances of a "rake." Her actions have potentially
compromised Betsy's reputation. Because the narrative depends upon
Betsy's virtue— and the numerous threats to this virtue-F lora almost
thw arts the novel's plot. By not being physically present to take on the
advances of Betsy's ravisher, Flora has removed her body from the
position of substitute: the amorous student m ust turn to Betsy because
there is no surrogate present to receive his advances. In other words, if
Flora had stayed in the room, her mere presence would have offered
protection. On the other hand, Haywood has w ritten the part th at Flora
plays as body-double perfectly. That is, as readers, we do not know what
happens while Flora is not in the scene; her adventure takes place off
stage, leaving much to the reader's im agination. The substitution works
because it is unclear what happens beyond the novel's page. Flora
willingly goes w ith her own student, im plying th a t w hat takes place
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115
beyond the view of the reader is precisely th a t which will protect the
heroine. The off-stage action represents a prophylactic version of what
will not happen to Betsy. Flora's body is not physically in the scene;
however, her apparent willingness to participate in sexual intercourse
defers any sexual danger to which Betsy will be subjected. Even though
Betsy has been physically assaulted, the assault on her virtue need not
be completed because of w hat takes place beyond the eyes of the reader.
The logic of protection which Haywood executes depends upon the fact
th at Flora will carry out behind the scenes the very designs which the
student wants to execute, for the reader's viewing pleasure. By
extension, Betsy's resistance is made possible by the reader's
supposition th at Flora does not resist.
Flora’s job as body substitute is more fully realized in her
assignations with the hero Mr. Trueworth. Flora's actions toward
Trueworth are doubly motivated by jealousy and desire. Flora is jealous
of the suitors who pay attention to Betsy; at the same time she desires to
transfer Trueworth's affections to herself. She w ants literally to be
Betsy's body double if this will mean th at she is rewarded w ith the hero.
To this end, she spins out an intrigue th a t is, in effect, staged on Betsy's
body. Early in the novel the narrator reveals an act of benevolence on the
part of Betsy and her friend Miss Mabel who have agreed to take
financial care of an orphaned baby, the daughter of a maid whose
husband left her. The two women agree to pay for a nurse and send the
baby into the country where they continue to support it. Flora uses this
gesture of kindness to underm ine the relationship th a t Betsy has with
Trueworth, pointing to the baby as tangible proof th a t Betsy is not chaste
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11
and is thus not worthy of the hero's affections. In the anonymous letter
Flora writes to Trueworth to cast doubt on Betsy's chastity, she makes
sure th a t Betsy's body is implicated: it is vital th at Trueworth believe
th at the baby in the country is the result of Betsy's lack of, as it were,
"birth control." Trueworth m ust believe th a t the child comes from
Betsy's body. Plotting her scheme, Flora reflects,
at last she hit upon the most detestable project of representing
w hat proceeded from the noblest propensity of Miss Betsy's
nature, as the effect of a crim inal compulsion: in fine, to make
it appear so feasible, as to be believed th at the child, who owed
half its maintenance to her charity, was entirely kept by herself,
and the offspring o f her own body. (221, emphasis added)
Rather than substitute her own body for the body th at supposedly gave
birth, Flora puts Betsy's body a t risk by writing to Trueworth: "your
intended bride has been a m other without the pleasure of owning herself
as such. The product of a shameful passion is still living" (221). Flora
w rites this potential "shame" on Betsy's body, claiming th a t she can
prove the heroine's loss of chastity by producing the tangible offspring of
her passions. This proof is im portant to Trueworth; he looks at the
child, ascertains th at it is named Betsy, and deduces w ithout further
questioning that it must belong to Betsy. At first Trueworth tries to
excuse her behavior: "who can account for accident? she m ight, in one
unguarded moment, grant w hat, in another, she would blush to think
of' (252). However, he is unable to excuse what he perceives to be Betsy's
em barrassing weakness and w ithdraw s his m arriage proposal.
Instead of protecting Betsy, Flora has put her at risk by m arking her
body as illicit producer.
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However, as w ith the students at Oxford, Haywood has
constructed a double valence, two possible readings, to Flora's behavior.
On the one hand she has left Betsy exposed to bodily confusion; by
substituting Betsy's body for the body of the real mother, Flora has
undermined Betsy's m arketability in m arriage. At the same time, Flora
has set herself up again in the position of protector and body substitute.
By exposing Betsy's seeming lack of chastity, Flora clears the way for
her own amorous affair with Trueworth. When she approaches him in
the guise of an "incognita," face veiled and identity hidden, Trueworth
consents to an affair. The narrator states, "What conversation after this
passed between them, I shall leave to the reader's imagination" (281).
The discovery of Flora's identity does not hinder Trueworth's passions,
but it is made clear th at he chooses an affair w ith Flora because she
offered herself to him. In his eyes, she is no better than a prostitute:
"the amour w ith this fond girl afforded him a pleasing am usem ent for a
time; and without filling his heart with a new passion, cleared it of those
rem ains of his former one, which he had tak en so much pains to
extirpate" (282). Flora is a surrogate; after having worked so hard to
cast doubt on Betsy's character, she ends up safeguarding the heroine's
body by having sex with Trueworth. In addition, Flora also offers bodily
protection to H arriot, whom Trueworth will eventually marry.
Trueworth's affair w ith Flora perm its his chaste courtship of H arriot.
The displacem ent of passions is rem iniscent of M andeville's proposals:
because Trueworth is satisfying his desires elsewhere, H arriot's
chastity rem ains unthreatened.5
^Haywood firm ly keeps the double-standard o f sexual experience in place when
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1 18
Miss Forward, Betsy’s friend from boarding school, offers the
heroine a sim ilar kind of protection; Miss Forward's substitutions,
however, are more m aterially linked to her own body than Miss Flora's.
The two women begin their acquaintance a t an early age when Miss
Forward enlists Betsy to carry Miss Forward's notes to a young suitor.
The narrator hints th a t this "amorous intrigue" early initiated Betsy
into the "mystery of courtship" (5). Miss Forward is described as having
"a great deal of the coquette in her nature"; in other words, "she knew
how to play fast-and-loose with her lover" (5). Like Flora, Miss Forward
exhibits the desire to pursue illicit pleasures, and the consequences of
these pleasures are presented to Betsy as examples of indecent behavior.
Betsy learns the results of Miss Forward's intrigues when the two meet
after a long separation. When Miss Forward writes to Betsy and
requests a visit, Betsy finds her friend in greatly diminished
circum stances. Though Miss Forward's father is a "gentlem an of a
large estate," his daughter is living in an ill-reputed boarding house
which is Betsy's first indication th at Miss Forward has fallen out of
favor with her family. Betsy's suspicions are confirmed by the tale that
Miss Forward relates--a narrative of sexual intrigue and
disappointment. Miss Forward tells Betsy the details of her relations
w ith Mr. Wildly, a country rake, her subsequent pregnancy,
abandonm ent and attem pted abortion. The last consequence, the
abortion attem pt, links Miss Forward's protection of the heroine most
she allow s Trueworth to have an affair. In The Sign of Anerellica (New York:
Columbia UP, 1989) Janet Todd observs: "That the double sta n d a rd .. . is firmly in
place is not doubted by the narrator or the heroine, and even a man with the name of
Trueworth can have his fling in a way unthinkable for B etsy. Virtue in a woman may
be more than chastity, but it certainly demands chastity first and foremost" (149).
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closely with her own body and explicitly makes birth control a p art of the
plot. Miss Forward's plot is not merely about how to procure an
abortion; her story is about how to not get pregnant at all.
Miss Forward's narrative begins a t the same boarding school
where she and Betsy parted company. One day Mademoiselle
Grenouille, a new French teacher, Miss Forward and two others are
walking when they notice a party on the other side of the garden wall.
The ladies stop to watch, at which time they are noticed by the young
men who make up the party. The men invite the "young ladies of
distinction" to join them. The invitation is consented to by Mademoiselle
Grenouille after she elicits a promise from a young lord who "upon his
honour" guaranteed th a t no "rudeness m ight be offered" (77). At the
party, however, the young ladies are kissed to excess and Miss Forward
relates: "In short, never were poor innocent girls so pressed, so kissed;
every thing but the dernier undoing deed, and th a t there was no
opportunity of completing, every one of us, our tutoress not excepted, I
am certain experienced" (78). As a consequence of this party, Miss
Forward begins a correspondence w ith Mr. Wildly who continually
flatters her vanity. In time, Miss Forward consents to a clandestine
m eeting which culm inates in sexual intercourse: "His stren g th was far
superior to mine; there was no creature come to my assistance; the
time, the place, all joined to his wishes; and, with the bitterest regret
and shame, I now confess, my own fond h eart too much consented" (83).
Though she seems a t first an unw illing participant, Miss Forw ard is
erotically stim ulated by the encounter. She continues a sexual
relationship w ith Mr. Wildly until she discovers th a t she is pregnant, a
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development neigher participant expected. Miss Forward tells Betsy
th at even though pregnancy was "a n atural consequence of the folly
[she] had been guilty of," the possibility had "never once entered [her)
head" (87). To safeguard the secrecy of th eir relationship, Miss Forward
and Mr. Wildly devise a plan to embroil Mademoiselle Grenouille in her
own sexual relationship. The latter consents (indeed, it is revealed th at
she is even more interested in sex than Miss Forward) but unlike her
student she does not get pregnant as a result. She has not taught Miss
Forward about birth control, of which she seems, by implication,
knowledgeable.6
The inform ation th a t Mademoiselle Grenouille conveys to Miss
Forward comes after the fact. After Miss Forward's abandonm ent by
Mr. Wildly and the discovery of her pregnancy, Mademoiselle
Grenouille advises: "I see no recourse you have, then, but by taking a
physick to cause an abortion" (87). For Mademoiselle Grenouille, the
issue is not merely to rid Miss Forward of this burden but to protect her
own reputation as well. Mademoiselle Grenouille is afraid of what will
be said about her when Miss Forward's condition becomes visible— when
Miss Forward's indiscretion, and perhaps her own, plays itself out on
the body. To Miss Forward she states, "You m ust pretend you are a little
^M adem oiselle G renouille's F renchness— her nam e, "frog," vehem ently
marks her as French— points to an interesting hint o f perm issiveness. Haywood, like
many others living in Britain in the eighteenth century, may have looked to France as
a place of lesser morals. Indeed her earlier and more licentious novels were
frequently set in foreign countries such as France and Italy. The change in locale
frequently offered up the freedom for sexual exploits that would have been read as
totally debauched if located on British soil. In addition, M adem oiselle Grenouille's
Frenchness invokes a knowledge of birth control, of the "french letter" as the condom
was frequently called, and a long history of sexual abandon. Of course M adem oiselle
Grenouille can protect herself: She is French and understands such things.
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disordered, and send for an apothecary; the sooner the better, for if it
should become visible, all would infallibly be known, and we should both
be ruined" (87). The vital necessity for both women is to keep desire, as
represented by the sexually active body, hidden. For a young potential
heroine, desire becomes most dangerous when it m arks itself on her
body as consummated desire. To avoid th is danger, Miss Forward
agrees to procure an abortion. Miss Forward has to choose between two
"guilty" objects: m aking her shame public or committing the moral
offence of term inating her pregnancy. Telling Betsy about her decision
Miss Forward uses a moralizing tone:
Thus, by having been guilty of one crime, I was ensnared to
commit another of a yet fouler kind: one was the error of nature,
this an offence against nature. The black design, however,
succeeded not: I took potion after potion, yet still retained the
token of my shame; which a t length became too perspicuous for
me to hope it would not be taken notice of by all who saw me. (88)
Haywood concludes the episode w ith Miss Forward's relief at the
outcome: "The only joy I have is, th at the wretched infant died in three
days after its birth, so has escaped the woes which children thus
exposed are doomed to bear" (91). The "natural" death of the infant is
her only consolation. She is absolved of the guilt of having killed her
child, but is spared having to raise it or to introduce it to society as a
bastard.
The narrative of Miss Forward's attem pted abortion reveals
Haywood's own position on sexual desire. Miss Forward's plot suggests
th at the act of sex is not shameful or forbidden in itself, but the "token of
shame" which it leaves is ruinous because it can be read by others as a
sign of defilement. That Miss Forward and Mademoiselle Grenouille
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had sexual intercourse before marriage is not too troublesome to
Haywood; th at Miss Forward got "caught" is another m atter. The
pregnancy enables Haywood to adopt a moralizing tone about Miss
Forward which was absent while the character was only promiscuous.
In effect, the pregnancy is the reason why Miss Forward m ust be
socially demoted, moved into a questionable boarding house and
transformed into a courtesan. Promiscuity in itself is not, for Haywood,
a social problem which can stand on its own as a lesson for the novel's
heroine. The lesson intended for Betsy is implicitly about birth control,
and thus the prophylactic function of Miss Forward highlights both the
necessity of protecting the heroine and of teaching the heroine to protect
herself. In effect, Miss Forward functions as Betsy's "birth control" .
before the pregnancy; afterw ards her story provides information about
abortifacients. Miss Forward imbibes "potion after potion" and does not
succeed; however, w hat was ineffectual for her was varyingly successful
for many other women in the eighteenth century.7
The moralizing tone which Haywood inserts into Miss Betsv
Thoughtless at the moment of Miss Forward's attem pted abortion
mimics discourses on abortion circulating in eighteenth-century
medical texts. One of the most moralizing in tone is Jean Astruc's A
Treatise on All the Diseases Incident to Women translated from the
French and published in London in 1743. Astruc's text was intended for
those studying to enter the medical profession and offers aid in
7See Angus M cLaren's Reproductive Rituals (London and New York:
M ethuen, 1984), Alan M acFarlane’s Marriage and Love in England 1300-1840
(Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1986), and Lawrence Stone's The Fam ily Sex and M arriage
In England 1500-1800 (New York: Harper & Row, 1977) for discussions of abortion
potions.
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discerning symptoms of and curing so-called women's diseases.
A struc's advice to young doctors concerning induced abortion m erits
quotation in its entirety for w hat it reveals of eighteenth-century medical
and moral attitudes.
You may observe th at there are several other Methods and
Means of procuring Abortion; for how many abominable
Remedies do some unfortunate C reatures employ, to the u tter
Shame of human N ature and Religion, to destroy their Fruit?
These Causes are but too common, in an Age so much corrupted
as ours. These miserable Women who covet Abortion, never
want M inisters of all Robes and Conditions, to put their wicked
Intentions in Practice; who yield to their Desires and serve as
Accomplices of th eir Ruin. I am slenderly acquainted with
these Cases; yet know still too many of them, to give you an Idea
of their Wickedness. God forbid th a t I should give you any Light
into such pernicious Remedies, and diabolical Arts, which are
employ'd for such execrable Purposes. Nor do I think th at their
Knowledge is necessary for you; because you can perfectly fulfil
I sic I the Duties of your Profession, in this Case, if you can but
prevent Abortion, and check the Symptoms which it brings
along with it. But this you can do without the Knowledge of
these damnable Arts. Tho' the Accidents which such Abortions
give Room, are very pernicious; and which these vile Creatures
m erit, as the ju st Judgem ents of God; nevertheless, Religion
obliges us, as much as possible we can, to obviate their bad
Consequences. (363)
Astruc's text flatly condemns abortion, along with the women who seek
to term inate their pregnancies and those who aid women in their
p u rsu it.8 Like Miss Forward who calls attem pting an abortion a "black
design," Astruc w rites of "wicked Intentions" and "diabolical Arts."
Nothing so completely assaults the process of "nature" as seeking to
term inate a pregnancy and, as a result, adding to the corruption of what
8Astruc's condemnation o f abortion comes from a Catholic sub-text in his
w ritings. The difference between Catholic France and Anglican England su ggests
that religion may invoke different "medical" stances on abortion. I w ant to suggest
that Astruc's moralizing takes place under the auspices of the Catholic Church. In
other words, one may have to read the texts of Catholicism in order to understand
Astruc's m edical/m oral position. This connection bears further investigation.
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Astruc believes is an already debauched age. Thus doctors in training
should not be told of the specifics th at can bring about an abortion, but
they m ust be made aware of the fact th at there are "miserable" women
who will turn to desperate m easures when they discover th at they are
pregnant. Astruc argues th at it is the job of a physician to recognize the
symptoms of abortion and to prevent it-to save the child if, indeed, the
mother cannot be saved, and thus "obviate [the] bad Consequences."
Astruc writes this as a moral and religious duty, and not necessarily as
a medical obligation; the rules of morality and religion both precede and
form those of medicine.
In making his brief argum ent against abortion, Astruc finds it
necessary to construct a gap between the implied male physician and
other medical practitioners who perform or help women to procure
abortions: male and female midwives. These practitioners (midwives)
do not fulfill their duties as healers; rather, they are the "Accomplices"
who aid women in their own "Ruin." By 1743 when Astruc's book was
published the practice of midwifery was increasingly associated with
abortion. Lawrence Stone has noted th at the growing num ber of male-
midwives "was looked upon with deep suspicion both by the ignorant
female midwives, whose livelihoods were threatened by their advent,
and also by their professional medical colleagues, who associated the
trade with abortionists" (59). Stone wrongly subscribes to the belief
propagated by male-midwives th a t all female midwifes were "ignorant";
however, he points to an im portant reason why A struc may have wanted
to construct a distance between his trained physicians and other
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medical practitioners.9 It was becoming increasingly im portant for
physicians to distinguish them selves from "uneducated" medical
practitioners; in turn, this distance would facilitate the establishm ent of
licensing criteria. This was especially tru e in relation to the treatm ent
of women’s disease, including childbirth, which had traditionally been
attended to by a female midwife and treated in what might be called a
pseudo-scientific m anner.1 0 In other words, since the female midwife,
especially in the country, was offered no formal medical training, much
of her practice relied upon superstition and practical experience of
childbirth. Though the midwife's work had been relatively successful,
and female midwives such as Jane Sharp had w ritten medical texts to
ensure th at the midwife would become more educated, when obstetrics
became professionalized toward the end of the eighteenth century,
9In Virtue of Necessity (Ann Arbor: The U of Michigan P. 1989), Elaine Hobby
counters Stone's condescension, contending that m idwives were anything but
ignorant. M idwives were educated by experience and through female-authored
midwife m anuals. See chapter seven "Skills B ooks-H ousew ifery, M edicine,
Midwifery" in which Hobby outlines a brief history of midwifery and the attem pts to
wrest it from women's control.
10Elizabeth Blackwell, in her 1895 autobiography Pioneer Work in Opening the
Medical Profession to Women (New York: Source Book Press, 1970), w rites that she
was not comfortable with the label "female physician" because the title was given to
women who performed abortions. Blackwell wrote that these women did not at all
exemplify the kind of medicine she wanted to pursue; she wanted to be a female doctor
not an abortionist. She writes: "The gross perversion of motherhood by the abortionist
filled me with indignation, and awakened active antagonism . That the honorable
term 'female physician' should be exclusively applied to those women who carried on
this shocking trade seemed to me a horror. It was an utter degradation of w hat might
and should become a noble position for wom en” (30). There is an obvious confusion
here between the idea of a woman doctor versus a doctor for women. Blackwell's
society conflated the two, assum ing that all women are necessarily defined by their
reproductive functions: either in need of a woman's doctor for "female problems" or
too problematically female to be a doctor.
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women were moved to the medical m arg in s.1 1 Astruc is ju st beginning
to draw battle-lines for the coming medical struggles.
Most revealing about Astruc's text is th a t he clearly delineates a
medical, moral imperative: stave off abortion a t all costs w hether it has
been naturally or unnaturally induced. A struc's is a moral im perative
echoed by Haywood in Miss Betsv Thoughtless. In Haywood's text,
Astruc's brand of morality comes into play when Miss Forward carries
within her body the "body" of another; what she had been doing with her
body previous to this moment was of seemingly little moral concern to
Haywood and her narrator. Pregnancy changes the stakes of Haywood's
text and dem onstrates how vital Miss Forward's body is to Betsy's
protection; Miss Forward is marked to ensure th at Betsy is not. Of
course, Haywood points to only one eighteenth-century position on
abortion in her novel. One might be able to argue th at she is actually
parodying Astruc's brand of m orality and, as a result, > * ' ^sing his
claims by mocking their moral importance. Similariv . could argue
that Haywood was somehow obliged to write a < v \iderr..^tio n of abortion
in her novel so th at she would not be in danger of beir.g accused of
endorsing the practice or of accepting the behavior of "loose" women.
This second possibility can be most persuasively argued by exam ining
Haywood's w riting career, which was founded on publishing amorous
novellas— novellas bordering on the pornographic— such as Lasselia: or.
1^See Jean Donnison's M idwives and M edical Men (New York: Shocken
Books, 1977) for a detailed discussion of the rise of obstetrics as a medical profession
and the consequent battle over the female practitioner's right to practice midwifery.
See also Chapter One: "Maternity, M idwifery and the Troublesome Knowledge of
Birth" where I trace the shift from midwifery to obstetrics and discuss its im plications
for women w riters.
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the Self-Abandon'd (1723), The Perplex'd Dutchess: or. Treachery
Rewarded (1728) or the wildly popular Love in Excess (1719). For these
novellas, Haywood was bitterly lampooned in Pope's Dunciad where she
appears as a kept m istress with what Jan et Todd has called "a bevy of
bastards (real or literary)" (147).1 2
Miss Betsv Thoughtless m arks Haywood's shift to the
increasingly moral novel of the middle eighteenth century, which saw
the publication of Sam uel Richardson's Pamela in 1740. Todd reports
th at Haywood did not write for many years after the publication of The
Dunciad. suggesting th a t the "adverse publicity cannot have helped her
in the increasingly moral years" (147).1 3 Miss Betsv Thoughtless can be
read as Haywood's attem pt at a new novelistic m orality in which women
are "punished" for th eir sexual freedom w here once, in her novellas,
32In The Dunciad. Pope is vitriolic is his dislike of Haywood:
See in the circle next, Eliza placed,
Two babes of love close clinging to her waist;
Fair as before her works she stands confessed,
In flowers and pearls by bounteous Kirkall dressed.
The Goddess then: "Who best can send on high
The salient spout, far stream ing to the sky;
His be yon Juno of m ajestic size,
With cow-like udders, and with ox-like eyes.
This China Jordan let the chief o'ercome
Replenish, not ingloriously, at home." (II, 157-166)
l^For further discussion of Haywood's reaction to Pope's Dunciad see Mary
Ann Schofield's Eliza Havwood (Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1985). In 1756 Haywood
wrote a conduct text called The Wife which looks very much like an attempt to fit
herself into the more "moral" atm osphere of the mid eighteenth-century. The Wife is
constructed as a guide for women after marriage and reads like Haywood’s shift to
more traditional values for her heroines. I use the word heroine because sections of the
book are w ritten as m iniature allegorical novels where characters learn lessons about
flirting and being subm issive to the will of their husbands. Indeed, The Wife advises
that women not conform fully or be wholly subm issive to their husbands, but the tenor of
the text indicates Haywood's desire to change her w riting style and, by extension,
enhance her reputation and regain her former popularity.
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female sexual passion had roamed unchecked.1 4 Formerly Miss
Forward might have had an abortion and continued her exploits
unabashed and unchastened. The new m orality to which Todd gestures
dictates th a t Miss Forward m ust suffer from the loss of her reputation,
ju st as Haywood herself had. Such suffering includes all the dangers to
which sexual desire exposes a woman, not the least of which was
having to turn to prostitution for economic support.
Haywood presents a position on abortion sim ilar to Astruc's
argum ent. O ther medical texts published during the eighteenth-
century assum ed a less moral posture on the subject in part because
they were intended for public use instead of medical education. William
Buchan's Domestic Medicine (1710) is one example of a lay medical text
intended to be kept in the house in order to assist wives and mothers in
treating minor family illnesses. Buchan's text is sim ilar to many of the
books w ritten for women which focused on taking care of the household.
Books such as The Ladies Library (1714) and The Ladv's Companion Or.
an infallible guide to the Fair Sex (1740) frequently contained medical
and cooking sections along with the more traditional sections offering
advice to young ladies about virtue, chastity and proper social behavior.
l4Clara Reeve, in her 1785 The Propress o f Rom ance. (New York: Facsim ile
Text Society, 1930) writes of Eliza Haywood: "she repented of her faults, and employed
the latter part of her life in expiating the offences of the former. -- There is reason to
believe that the examples of the two ladies we have spoken of [Aphra Behn and Mrs.
M anley I, seduced Mrs. Hey wood into the sam e tracks; she certainly wrote some
amorous novels in her youth. . . Mrs. Heywood had the singular good fortune to recover
a lost reputation, and the yet greater honour to atone for her errors" (120-21). Ros
Ballaster gives an excellent reading of Haywood's shift to the new morality in chapter
five of her book Seductive Forms: Women’s Amatory Fiction from 1648-1740 (Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1992). Ballaster suggests that Haywood's shift was not complete; that
she used some of her later fiction and her notoriety subtly to subvert the new morality
that was in full swing. According to B allaster, Clara Reeve m ight have wrongly
understood her contemporary.
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Reading these guides to femininity, a woman would have come upon
recipes for concoctions explicitly intended for contraception or abortion
purposes. Such recipes were one part herbal and one part superstition.
Domestic Medicine does not proffer such recipes, but Buchan does make
an oblique revelation about birth control th a t exposes his own position on
abortion. Buchan's position begins w ith his belief th at abortions occur
because women have been educated to idleness, an "indulgence" which
has been "carried too far" and has harm ed women instead of benefitting
them. He writes: "The confinement of females, besides hurting their
figure and complexion, relaxes th eir solids, weakens their minds, and
disorders all the functions of the body. Hence proceed obstructions,
indigestion, flatulence, abortions and the whole of nervous disorders"
(647). Idleness, instead of preserving womanhood, compromises
women's m ental and physical health.
Buchan's discussion of abortion is less about term inating
pregnancy than about pre-planned birth control. This is revealed in his
comparison between rural and urban women of drastically different
classes. In his section on barrenness he writes:
It is very certain th at high living vitiates the humors, and
prevents fecundity. We seldom find a barren women among the
labouring poor, while nothing is more common am ongst the
rich and affluent. The inhabitants of every country are prolific
in proportion to their poverty, and it would be an easy m atter to
adduce m any instances of women who, by being reduced to live
entirely upon a milk and vegetable diet, have conceived and
brought forth children, though they never had any before.
Would the rich use the same sort of food and exercise as the
better sort of peasants, they would seldom have cause to envy
their poor vassals and dependents the blessing of a num erous
and healthy offspring, while they pine in sorrow for the w ant of
even a single heir to their extensive dominions. (667)
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Two things are clear about Buchan's position: he deplores "high living"
and he believes th at women should have children. Implicit in his class-
based view of reproduction is a hint about the question of access to birth
control. On the surface, Buchan would seem to be discussing upper-
class women who have come to him w anting children, but have been
unable to reproduce because of idleness and poor diet. However, on
another level Buchan is deliberately overlooking the possibility th at these
women, perhaps because of economics, were better able to control their
fertility; a lesson th at Haywood may be trying to teach her heroine.
Buchan's position is not merely a moralistic stance on abortion, but
provides an inadvertent hint at access to birth control. While Buchan
assum es th at all women w ant to and should reproduce, his observations
hint at the possibility th at all women do not w ant children and instead
work to control their fertility. Buchan does not consider th at the
blissfully reproducing country women whom he praises may not want
so many children, but do not have access to the same resources that
th eir w ealthier sisters are using. Normally Miss Forward's class
standing should have provided her with the resources to procure the
necessary birth control methods; however, her pregnancy takes place in
the country where Mr. Wildly m istakes Miss Forward for a country
maid instead of a member of her proper class. He takes liberties, they do
not take precautions, and Miss Forward is sum m arily demoted to the
rank of prostitute.1 5
^A fter Miss Forward becomes a kept woman, she no longer gets pregnant nor
seem s in any danger of becom ing pregnant though she obviously is having sexual
relations with men. As a prostitute, she seem ingly has complete access to birth control.
If nothing else, Miss Forward knows how to procure an abortion, one of the most popular
forms of birth control. More likely, she would have been able to obtain condoms which
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F rancis M auriceau's The Diseases of Women w ith Child and in
Child-Bed (1710) adds another layer to the in-home medical reference
guides available to women and hints a t the history of abortion itself.
M auriceau subscribes to the belief th a t w hen women are pregnant
almost anything puts them at risk: vomiting, vigorous coughing,
diseases of all sorts and "whatever very much agitates and shakes the
big-belly'd Woman's Body, is subject to m ake her miscarry" (112).
M auriceau lists in great detail exactly w hat expels the "fruit" from the
womb, while constructing women as w eak vessels who should be
immobile when they are with child to ensure th at they carry the baby to
term. M auriceau subscribes to the belief th a t any vigorous exercise,
including w alking or "violent Passions of the Mind," will so weaken a
woman's already precarious constitution th a t she will immediately
miscarry. The implications of abortion are w ritten in the guise of a
warning: "It is most certain, a Woman is in more Danger of her Life
when she m iscarries, than at her full Time; because. . . Abortion is
wholly contrary to Nature" (114). In A struc's text this might have been
read as a clear warning not to go against nature, but M auriceau has
constructed his text as a source-book for protecting the pregnant woman
without offering any overt judgm ent as to the morality of inducing
abortion. At one point he suggests "avoiding the use of all Diureticks
and Aperitives" but this is as close as he comes to telling women not to
ingest poisons in the hope of inducing abortion.
were readily available to prostitutes and the men who engaged their services. See Peter
Fryer's The Birth Controllers (New York: Stein and Day, 1965) for a brief history of
the availability of condoms and condom vendors in the eighteenth century.
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Indeed, M auriceau seems much less concerned with real
pregnant women th an w ith pregnant women as he has constructed
them. In other words, M auriceau is much more interested in the weak
vessel who needs protection than the woman who would w ant to protect
herself. This is ironic because M auriceau’s tex t comes very close to
being an abortion m anual. Its vigorous and m eticulous warnings hint
at exactly how a woman can induce abortion to term inate her
pregnancy. If read against itself, M auriceau's text suggests numerous
methods for using abortion as birth control. M auriceau's list of things
to avoid while pregnant includes "great Labour, strong contortions, or
violent Motions, of w hat m anner soever, in falling, leaping, dancing,
and running or riding, going in a Coach or Waggon, crying aloud, or
laughing heartily, or any Blow received on the Belly" (112). Taking
blows to the belly is the most disturbing method mentioned in the list.
McLaren reports th a t this was indeed a method used physically to expel
a foetus from the womb. Drawing on published reports from the late
seventeenth-century McLaren recounts physical beatings used to induce
abortion: "In the category of physical m eans of provoking abortion came
bleedings and beatings. In one seventeenth-century case a young
woman was asked by her lover 'to bruise her body thereby to destroy the.
. . child.' More common were reports of a seducer beating a woman in
order to cause her miscarriage" (101).
Beating was one of the more extreme m ethods of abortion and, in
McLaren's examples, was not necessarily m otivated by the pregnant
woman. Beating was most frequently a method of forced abortions
perpetrated by men. Engaging in great physical activity or exercise,
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against which M auriceau also w arns, was a more probable method
available to women who would have had access to his book. Miss
Forward might have tried riding a horse before turning to "physick," as
Rosamond does in George Eliot's M iddlemarch (1871-2). Eliot's novel is
set prior to the first Reform Bill (1832) and the Offence Against the
Persons Act of 1861 which restricted the sale of "noxious" substances
used in inducing abortions. At this later time period, Rosamond could
have had recourse to numerous methods if she indeed w anted to procure
an abortion. Like Miss Forward, she still would have been able to visit
an apothecary for abortifacients. However, instead of suggesting a
prem editated abortion attem pt (after all, Rosamond is m arried), Eliot
writes th at "Her baby was born prem aturely, and all the embroidered,
robes had to be laid by in darkness. This misfortune was attributed
entirely to her having persisted in going out on horseback one day when
her husband had desired her not to do so" (626). She continues, "since
Rosamond, as we know, was fond of horseback, there were plenty of
reasons why she should be tem pted to resume her riding when Captain
Lydgate. . . begged her to go out on the grey which he w arranted to be
gentle and trained to carry a lady" (629). Rosamond, ever desirous of
affection, has been flirting w ith Captain Lydgate, her husband's
relation, who has caught and held her attention. Rosamond seems
tempted by her own pleasure and by the possibility th at she could, by
riding a horse, distance herself from her husband. The vigorous ride
causes a prem ature birth, though Eliot notes:
In all future conversations on the subject, Rosamond was mildly
certain th at the ride made no difference, and th a t had she stayed
home the same symptoms would have come on and would have
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ended in the same way, because she had felt something like
them before (631).
Rosamond and Eliot construct accident as alibi by suggesting th a t
"nature" would have taken its course anyway. At the same time, the
word "mildly" indicates intent and purpose behind the excuse. Intent is
implied by the plot: Rosamond is bored in her marriage. Before she
goes riding, Rosamond tells her husband th a t she does not w ant to be
treated like a child; she disobeys her husband's desire th at she not ride,
claiming th at "there is a chance of accident indoors" (629). This
introduction of the possibility of an accident before the ride, enables,
then, a reading which hints at Rosamond's desire to abort her child;
distance from her husband might have included the desire not to have
his child.
Before George Eliot, Eliza Haywood brings a discussion of birth
control, which would most often have been invisible in eighteenth-
century novels, to center stage; her depiction of female bodies focuses on
the m ateriality of desire instead of on female desire as a empty male
construct. Haywood, by representing both a "pure" heroine and women
who do not fit neatly into the texts of female propriety, illustrates a range
of female experiences and desires which refute the dominant cultural
discourse conceiving of women as empty vessels or weak beings.
Haywood demands th at her reader call upon the extra-textual
knowledge invoked by her depiction of Miss Forward's attem pted
abortion and Flora's need to satiate her physical and romantic desires.
By doing so, Haywood suggests the possibility of an extra-textual
femaleness th a t exists in the real bodies of women with different
experiences. Though she safeguards her heroine, she does not present
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135
the virtuous Betsy as the only model for female experience. There was
something very threatening about Eliza Haywood— a brashness in her
w riting th at challenged or undermined the male establishm ent— th at
caused Pope to mock her so harshly. Miss Betsv Thoughtless
challenges the narrow definitions of femininity frequently proffered by
Haywood's male contemporaries and suggests th a t Haywood did not
embrace the new morality as fervently as it m ight first appear. Though
the novel exercises an overtly moral tone in its tendency to correct
female (mis)behavior, this tone acts as a screen which permits the
behavior and pleasures of the other female characters. Betsy is the
moralistic corrective. She is the heroine whose desires are condoned off
and recognized in their proper place: m arriage. Yet the learned
propriety of Betsy's desires perm its Flora and Miss Forward to pursue
their own pleasures. The great irony of Haywood's new, moral tone is
th at by exhibiting the veil of propriety she can create improper plots for
her other female characters. In other words, Haywood's plot of
substitution both protects the virtuous heroine and suggests the
pleasures, for other women, of not exercising such virtue.
Haywood's novel suggests th at contraception is about being and
staying chaste. Haywood's contraceptive discourse insists upon a
woman's ability to enjoy sexual pleasure while m aintaining control over
her own destiny. In her journal The Female Spectator. Haywood
narrates a story about the undoing of a heroine, Ism enia, by her
cunning lover M artius. In the beginning, Haywood w rites of Ismenia:
"Her virtue, like a rock, was impregnable from all assaults from
without, and as little capable of being betrayed by any guilty tenderness
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136
within" (66). However, by the end of the story, Ismenia has been seduced
by M artius and has given in to her own desires. Ism enia's story points
to a dangerous possibility: th at the line between female desire and
female vulnerability is not always clearly marked. More im portantly,
all women are vulnerable if they do not know how to protect th eir own
bodies. Haywood obviously understands th a t virtue is a wonderful, but
unrealistic form of contraception; it is easily overpowered by male
persistence and female passion. O ther methods m ust intervene to offer
real protection before and after intercourse. This is perhaps the most
threatening and dangerous revelation to be found in Miss Betsv
Thoughtless.
Miss Betsv Thoughtless is a book about prophylaxis. W ithout
Flora and Miss Forward as foils to the heroine the novel could not have
constructed Betsy's happy marriage, finally, to the hero. Ultimately, it
is only a happy marriage th at will provide Betsy with the kind of
protection she really needs. Early in the novel, while the headstrong
heroine is dism issing suitors and acting the coquette, her brother
Francis observes, "I see no real defence for you but in a good husband"
(178). Betsy does not find this necessary "good husband" in her first
m arriage to Mr. Munden; as a result, he does not offer her adequate
protection from bodily assaults. He even kills her pet squirrel,
figuratively erasing all possibility for Betsy to experience sexual
pleasure. Because Betsy does not find an honorable match, she is still
subject to the advances of other men. In one instance, Mr. M unden's
patron arranges to be alone with Betsy so he can, in effect, rape her. She
escapes him, but her husband does not believe th at Betsy had not
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brought the patron's advances upon herself. Betsy and Mr. Munden do
not m arry for love; she acquiesces because he is the last suitor left and
she is pressured by her family and guardians; he agrees because to back
down would be to lose his reputation. As a result, Betsy is left
unprotected. In addition, Flora and Miss Forward have already
exhausted their abilities to offer bodily protection; narratively, both have
become totally debauched and there is little they can now provide. Not
until Betsy separates from Mr. Munden, and he eventually dies, can she
find substantive protection in the proper love-match, Trueworth, whose
own wife has already passed away. The final message is clear: in
Trueworth, Betsy finds her true worth.
A heroine can not be rewarded w ith or exhibit her true worth •
unless she has been properly protected. In addition, it would seem th at
she cannot construct self-worth without the built-in protection th at other
female bodies provide. These protecting bodies provide a telling link
between Mandeville's A Modest Defence of the Publick Stews and
Haywood's Miss Betsv Thoughtless: both w riters reflect a cultural
moment grounded in a discourse of surrogacy. Mandeville and
Haywood construct an economy of prophylaxis upon which the
protection of the genteel woman's body can and m ust operate. Using
body doubles, both w riters suggest th a t "virtue" exists only when there is
something operating as its guard. In other words, one body m ust be
undone for every woman's body th at is preserved. Of course, this is not a
realistic proposal, but the suggestion of it in Mandeville's text, and the
way the foil characters operate in Haywood's novel, indicate th a t there
was a public willing to consume such depictions of body substitution.
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This public, probably a genteel readership— those who could afford books
and had the leisure to read them — might have found something
strangely comforting in the idea th a t there were women's bodies
specifically constructed to safeguard their wives, daughters and sisters.
But while discourses of substitution might comfort the genteel reader,
they erase the specificity of lower-class female bodies. The enactment
of this erasure is a troubling consequence of both Mandeville's and
Haywood's constructions. W ithout fully negotiating the problems of
class inherent in both texts, surrogacy comes at the expense of the lower
and servant classes; the female body th at acts as substitute is the body
already unable to protect itself economically. This is especially true in
Mandeville's proposal where the body of the prostitute has automatically
attained a debauched, "low-class" position. In M andeville's schema,
the bodies of lower-class women are used as the main sources of social
contraception; un-genteel female bodies are disposable.
These bodies are passed over as easily as Molly is used in
Fielding's Tom Jones (1749). Fielding's hero moves freely throughout
the country engaging in intercourse frequently and with many different
women. His first affair, however, is with Molly, a maid from the
serving-class with upper-class pretensions for which she is vehemently
and violently mocked by her family and female acquaintances. Molly
has been constructed as one of many foils to the pure heroine, Sophia.
As such, it is her job to protect the heroine's body; much like a
combination of Flora and Miss Forward, Molly engages in sexual
intercourse w ith Tom and becomes pregnant with his child. There are,
for him, no physical or social consequences. In his relationship with
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Molly, Tom feels remorse only mom entarily for undoing Molly: "To
debauch a young woman, however low her condition was, appeared to
him a very heinous crime" (145). Remorse, however, only keeps him
from Molly for three months before he can resist no longer and resumes
their relationship. Molly is a willing participant; indeed, she is
characterized as a hussy. As soon as she is "undone" by Tom she
deceives him w ith other men. Molly is depicted as a money-seeking
whore, despised and envied, but a whore nonetheless. Fielding makes a
point of the fact th a t she is no better than her mother who was "brought
to bed" w ithin a week after her m arriage.1 6
Fielding uses Molly to serve a function of Tom's plot, instead of
constructing the heroine's protection as a conscious theme of his novel.
That Molly does protect Sophia is a by-product of the plot, not its driving
force. In other words, Molly's presence helps to make Tom's m arriage
to Sophia possible by keeping the heroine chaste. However, instead of
making this surrogacy a m arker of Sophia's plot, Fielding uses Molly as
a sign of Tom's sexual conquests. Tom Jones can be read as a cultural
reflection on the disposable use of female bodies; however, this reflection
exists as a by-product of the plot. The same can be argued of
Mandeville's use of the prostitute: public stews would not only control
disease, but, by extension, regulate modesty. Haywood clearly differs
i^Tom Jones is a complex and m ulti-layered text. I have only skimmed the
surface of Tom’s relationship with Molly. What is clear from my reading is that
Molly, on one level, functions only as plot device for Sophia's protection. There are
many subtle w ays in which Fielding plays on sex and desire in his novel. For
example, Mr. W estern advises his daughter: "I hope, child, you will alw ays have
prudence enough to act as becomes you, but if you should not, marriage hath saved
many a woman from ruin” (244). The protection th at marriage can offer to a woman's
reputation is not available to Molly. Western rem inds the reader that there is no
virtue, only prudence.
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from her male colleagues in her conscious attention to the contraceptive
possibilities of her foil characters. Fielding's incidental point is
Haywood's plot— a central theme of her novel is how to protect the virtue
of her heroine, how to teach her about contraception and to bring already
circulating discourses about birth control into the heroine's reach. By
consciously putting into practice Mandeville's assertion th at an
unchaste woman"atones for the Loss of her own Chastity, by being a
Means to preserve th a t of others," Haywood wrote a novel whose very
narrative economy is th a t of prophylaxis. The preservative function
operates on many levels to educate and protect the heroine with life-
lessons. At the same tim e, Haywood educates and safeguards those
female readers who will be able to benefit from the knowledge (both
chaste and contraceptive) Betsy herself has gleaned.
Haywood's novel performs its prophylactic function through its
plot, but also by cordoning off readerly desire on the level of narration.
The allegorical plot of the novel must become more than the disciplining
of Betsy Thoughtless for her predictable m arriage with Trueworth in
order to uncover the more complex instruction about w hat a woman
needs to know in order to control her own body. For an eighteenth-
century reader, uncovering this knowledge may have required
fam iliarity with medical texts circulating contemporaneously with the
novel. By providing only a taste of this knowledge, Haywood's novel puts
desire into its proper place: within the narrative space of the novel. The
fictional characters act as surrogates for the reader's desire. In other
words, Haywood's tex t requires a "condoming" of readerly desire by
constructing a prophylactics of identification. The model of surrogacy
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1
and substitution which Haywood enacts requires identification with the
characters while at the same tim e requiring th at this identification
reside w ithin a specific space cordoned off for such desires. Ju st as
Betsy is disciplined to desire in her proper place, it is suggested th a t the
reader desire only by substitution. In part, the pleasure in reading the
novel comes from the knowledge th a t desire is effected properly, as with
Betsy, or th a t it resides outside proper limits only for protective
purposes, as with Flora and Miss Forward. Haywood's prophylactics of
desire also, and more slyly, suggests that, as with M auriceau's text if
read against itself, one can find possibilities for female desire which
include both pleasure and protection.
Haywood's novel challenges previous narratives of female d esire-
cultural narratives th a t suggest women have no sexual agency— by
exploiting the possibilities of her foil characters. Miss Flora and Miss
Forward do not necessarily fit into the status quo; they do indeed
preserve the heroine, but at the same time they satisfy their own illicit
desires, desires which are not neatly folded into patriarchal plots. Flora
and Miss Forward fall out of the narrative; however, I would argue that
their desires resonate beyond the protection they offer Betsy. For if on
one level these women protect the heroine, on another level they preserve
th eir own access to pleasure a t the same time. Eliza Haywood's Miss
Betsv Thoughtless consciously delineates a contraceptive plot by pointing
to the need for modes of self-preservation besides "mere" virtue. In her
well-researched The Curious History of Contraception (New York: St.
M artin's Press, 1971), Shirley Green observes th a t when condoms were
first put to use in London in the early eighteenth-century they were often
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referred to as preservatives because they "preserved" the man from
disease and a t the sam e time "preserved"a woman's reputation. If we
follow this logic, Miss Flora and Miss Forward do not only protect Miss
Betsy with their bodies by taking on the effects of intercourse for her;
they figuratively act as condoms, as a method of birth control th at keeps
a woman's reputation intact. As long as Betsy does not get pregnant
there is no proof of her chastity except her supposed virtue. She could
have been keeping her virtue intact by using condoms for preservation.
Since both Flora and Miss Forward are constructed to make sure th at
Betsy does not get pregnant (or violated), they function as condoms.
Betsy may not be virtuous a t all, but condoms make loss of chastity more
difficult to detect. As we have already seen, Haywood believed that
prescribing virtue was not adequate advice for a young heroine. Indeed,
the preservative function of the other female characters is a reminder
th a t proffering virtue and chastity as birth control is not necessarily
enough. Sometimes a heroine needs body doubles to keep herself
"chaste."
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Chapter 4
Giving Birth to Rabbits:
N arrative Desire, Medical Genius and Fem ale Imagination
I'm telling you stories. T ru st me.
—Jeanette W interson, The Passion
My analysis of both Wollstonecraft and Haywood suggests that
much of the eighteenth-century discourse of female propriety was
defined for women by male authors. Every aspect of female behavior
was scripted to supply women with a set of rules by which they were
expected to abide. While a heroine or a genteel woman might have been
able to m anipulate propriety to facilitate her own pleasures— pleasures
veiled by the very codes of decorum she was trying to subvert— official
discourses were continually realigning them selves in order to challenge
female m aneuverability. In the fictional world, for example, Haywood's
Miss Betsy Thoughtless might have been able to preserve her own body
and desires by exploiting the prophylactic function of the novel's other
female characters; however, in the non-fictional world of eighteenth-
century British society, women's bodies were increasingly subject to
prophylactic and medical discourses aimed a t containing their desire.
Medicine, as an em erging and official discourse— defined as such by its
male practitioners— began to follow the course of conduct book literature,
its practitioners authoring books in which they outlined proscriptions
against female appetites and behaviors. Medical practitioners—
including Jean A struc, W illiam Buchan, P eter Cham berlen, Nicholas
Culpeper, Jam es Fordyce, William H unter and W illiam Smellie—
provided medical explanations for their descriptions of female nature
and consequent prescriptions for female behavior. By ascribing
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"scientific" reasons to th eir versions of female decorum, medical
practitioners established seemingly indisputable standards with which
women had to comply. Claim ing "science" as th eir standard, rath er
than social convention, medical men turned th eir attention to treating
and discursively restricting female bodies. However, as we shall see
through a reconstruction of one specific story, medicine was still a
speculative science, and these new prescriptions had yet to be tested.
In 1751 when John Hill, satirist, skeptic and member of the Royal
Society, chose to spoof and attack the many published findings of the
pseudo-scientific organization, he cited among the most ridiculous the
belief in a pregnant woman's imagination. The Royal Society, a group
founded in the late seventeenth century, was comprised of the top
scholars and scientists of the day. At the same tim e, the organization
was riddled with quacks and am ateurs who could, seemingly at will,
present narratives of th eir numerous findings to the Society and have
them published in its reviews. To Hill, as to other observers a t the time,
it seemed as if the Society was indiscrim inate and would publish any
unsubstantiated or far-fetched theory that was presented.1 In his A
Review of the Works of the Roval Society (1751), a critique of its
"scientific" papers, Hill ridicules the most outrageous published works
in order to illum inate the Society's ignorance and simplicity. In his
Review. Hill critiques papers which provide evidence for the existence of
1For more specific inform ation on the working and history of the Royal Society
see Sir Harold Hartley's The Roval Society its Origins and Founders (London: The
Royal Society, 1960) and Dorothy Stimson's Scientists and Amateurs: A History of the
Roval Society (New York: Greenwood Press, 1968). H artley praises the Society and its
accom plishm ents, while Stim son provides a more critical look at its less-th an -
scien tific proceedings.
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m ermaids and m inotaurs, th a t describe in detail strange,
undocumented diseases and th a t propose unsubstantiated,
imaginatively fabricated pseudo-scientific findings. It is in this context
th a t he comes to a paper on pregnant women.
The paper, "Of a Child terribly wounded in its Mother's Womb,"
narrates the story of a child born with a hole in its breast. In order to
explain this strange wound, the doctor who performed the delivery and
wrote the paper asks the m other if she recently had a fright. In answer
to this question, Hill writes th a t "eager to have a strange Story in her
Family," the mother relates th at she recently heard a tale about a man
killing his wife "by giving her a Wound in the Breast" (63). The
attending doctor uses this story to explain why the child was born
injured and, as a result, died. Ever the skeptic, Hill does not believe in
the power of the woman's im agination to cause any wound; rather, Hill
believes in the doctor's power of persuasion. In his critique, Hill
suggests that the doctor forced the mother to invent a story th at would
explain her child's wound. Hill claims th at the published account of the
im agination's influence is not true because, he reports, the doctor
"unluckily confessed afterw ards th a t the Wound was given by one of his
own Instrum ents, tho' he had perfectly convinced the old Woman at the
Gossiping, and the other old Woman of the Royal Society, th at it has
happened by impossible Means" (63). The doctor uses the story to shift
the possibility of any wrongdoing from him self to the mother. The
female imagination, in other words, was a convenient excuse for the
doctor's own m istakes. It provided a proof of the doctor's innocence
while a t the same tim e furnishing the m other w ith an excuse for her
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m isshapen child. Strikingly, the Royal Society's belief in such an
account aligns them with gossiping women, certainly not proper
company for learned men to keep.
Hill assumes that the doctor forced the mother to create a
narrative, but the word "eager" seems to suggest another possibility.
The m other m ight have been a willing participant; her narrative is
placed in opposition to the discourse of th e learned men. W hat
resonates in Hill's retelling of the supposedly scientific paper is the
mother's desire to "have a strange Story in her Family." The m other is
"eager" to construct her own narrative and, in the process, to create a
story for herself and her family. As we can see, such a story has the
power to become, in effect, part of a scientific discourse. The narrative is
published in the findings of an im portant medical society and then
retold in Hill's critique. Hill's analysis itself contains many im portant
clues to the force of narrative. He is eager to dispel the power of female
imagination in order to indict the bum bling medical practitioner, to
erase the woman's story and to replace it w ith a more powerful
discourse of "truth." But Hill's discourse of tru th is a mere accident,
"unluckily" told by the doctor. In turn, the doctor admits to having
convinced the "old Woman at the Gossiping"— the person in a position to
monitor the b irth -o f a very different story. Each participant generates a
different narrative; each creates and controls a different perception by
recasting the story. In her novel The Passion. Jeanette Winterson
intim ates th a t the story teller is, to some extent, in control of meaning.
She rem inds us of a narrator's power by repeating the phrase "I'm
telling you stories. Trust me" w henever her characters n arrate the
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history of their own lives, a t once pointing up the supposed tru th of
stories while drawing attention to them as subjectively constructed
plots.2
I want to argue th a t to create stories, especially stories about
birth, is in a m etaphorical sense to reproduce. For women in
particular, the desire to create fictions th at are in conflict with or
present a challenge to hegemonic discourses m ight represent a desire to
play with the boundaries of truth and to m anipulate supposedly rigid
cultural narratives such as those created by medical science and its
practitioners. Plotting a narrative rooted in the discourse of female
im agination— a discourse th at Hill suggests is counter to w hat he might
call "real" science— the mother quoted above gives birth to a specifically
female plot. In so doing, she enters into a medical debate th at raged
throughout the eighteenth century and, as we shall see, pitted science— a
male discourse— against im agination— in this context a female
discourse. W hat I am reading as a mother's narrative drive illustrates
the power of women's imagination, a power th a t was both acknowledged
and suppressed by male medical practitioners.
2In "Jeanette W interson's Sexing the Postmodern," (in The Lesbian
Postmodern. Laura Doane, ed INew York: Columbia UP, 19941), Laura Doane suggests
that W interson "ascribelsl political efficacy to narrativity." For W interson, "the
invention of stories is a political act" (141). In a 1990 interview , Winterson articulated
the connection when she stated that she's "hoping all the time that I writing] will
challenge people, both into looking more closely at these things they thought were cut
and dried and also, perhaps, into inventing their own stories" (quoted in Doane 141).
In her unpublished m anuscript Straight Talk: Theorizing H eterosexuality in
Fem inist Postmodern Fiction. Ann Marie Hebert argues that storytelling is a political
act, one that can challenge norm alizing scripts and w hat she calls, following Lyotard,
the m etanarratives of W estern culture. In her study, woman-authored narratives
challenge the cultural scripts that conscript women into heterosexuality. Citing the
sam e passage from The P assion, she writes: "This double-edged im perative, designed
both to assuage and to arouse m istrust, turns on the oscillating m eaning of stories-a
true account of what really happened?-or a fib, a lie?" (27).
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Childbirth seems to provide the opportunity for producing fictional
narratives as powerful fictions. Situating this within the context of my
project, I w ant to suggest th a t female-authored fictions offered a
challenge to eighteenth-century medical narratives about female desire
and female bodies. I will argue th a t the case of one female body in
particular— Mary Toft, the supposed rabbit-breeder-can help illum inate
the power of storytelling. I will also suggest th at her story sheds light on
the vulnerability of other narratives. Reading Toft's body-and the story
her body gives birth to— brings into focus a range of gendered power
relations: the relationship between birth control and the control of
birth; between women patients and male practitioners; between
ignorant midwives and supposedly more enlightened physicians;
between the "female" im agination and "male" science; and between
female "fancy" and male genius. One way to read the desire to construct
plots from female "fancy" is to reconstruct the narrative of Mary Toft's
confusing and spectacular body. Her fraud suggests th at even though
male practitioners claimed to have illuminated the dark recesses of the
hum an body, there was still much left to be explored. As we shall see,
while her body seemed to be giving birth to rabbits her "imagination"
gave birth to many other narratives.
GIVING BIRTH TO RABBITS
In 1726, reports came to London through John Howard, surgeon
at Guilford, th at Mary Toft of Godalming had given birth to seven rabbits
and was on the verge of being delivered of her eighth with, he assumed,
many more to follow. In his letter to N athaniel St. Andre, physician to
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King George I and surgeon to the W estm inster Hospital Dispensary,
Howard wrote: "If you have any curious Person th a t is pleased to come
Post, fhel may see another leap in her U terus, and shall take it from her
if he pleases; which will be a great Satisfaction to the Curious [sic I"
(Braithw aite, 12). Mary Toft was a rural laborer and already a mother.
Before she began giving birth to rabbits, she had been pregnant with
w hat had been assumed to be another child. Modern historians
Glennda Leslie and S. A. Seligman both report th at the rabbit affair
began on 23 April 1726 when Mary, five weeks pregnant, saw a rabbit
run by her in the field. Because it was rare for her to procure such a
delicacy, Mary and her friend tried to catch it, but it eluded them.
Seligman writes: "This sent IMaryl longing for a rabbit. . . That night
she dreamed of rabbits and for the next three weeks had a constant
strong desire to eat them" (349). In September, instead of being brought
to bed with child, she was delivered of pig parts with the assistance of
Howard. The effects of pregnancy persisted beyond this delivery and in
November Mary Toft began to deliver rabbits rapidly. Reports of her
strange deliveries were spread by Howard, encouraging the curious to
examine the situation for them selves.3
Leslie reports th a t in eighteenth-century England people were
fascinated "not only w ith strange diseases and m iraculous cures, |b u t|
their attention was captured by curious medical events. News of an
Seligman: "During the first week in November reports began to reach
London of peculiar happenings at Godalming. It appeared that one of the local
inhabitants was being delivered of rabbits at the rate of almost one a day. Accounts
began to appear in the newspaper and these rumors were confirmed by letters from the
man-midwife in charge of the case, w ritten to persons of distinction in town and
describing the labours" (349-50).
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extraordinary birth. . . was subject to discussion, gossip, and rumor by
the illiterate and literate alike" (269). Fascination with strange births
cut across all social classes: Mary Toft's case would have been on the
lips of many people, and her name would have circulated both in the
coffee houses and on the streets of Covent Garden. Every seeker of
medical curios would have wanted to observe w hat Howard describes in
his letter; might have wanted, if possible, to deliver Mary of rabbits for
him or herself. The London population would have been fam iliar with
drawings and stories of monstrous births related by doctors and mothers
whose children came from their wombs unfinished or deformed. Late-
seventeenth and early eighteenth-century midwife m anuals were
riddled with drawings and tales depicting such births, and the belief in
such m onstrosities would have fueled rum ors about Mary Toft.4 In
turn, these rumors would have confirmed the already known possibility
of such oddities. In other words, Mary Toft's strange births merely
corroborated the already circulating belief in such possibilities.
While everyone might have been interested in the strange events,
only those who could afford the journey traveled to Guilford where Mary
had been moved. Among the travelers were physicians and male-
midwives seemingly eager to explore and exploit the curious medical
phenomenon. N athaniel St. Andre, having accepted Howard's
invitation to deliver Mary of her next rabbit, was the first to arrive at the
scene. St. Andre attended Mary twice, and both times she was delivered
“ ^ h e m ost fam ous and widely circulated m anual w as Aristotle's M aster-Piece
which had been frequently reprinted since its first publication in 1690. This text
includes draw ings of children born hairy, m onstrous, deformed and d isfig u red -
drawings rendered to educate but also to satisfy the public curiosity. Such drawings
were also intended to titillate while they horrified their viewers.
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of w hat appeared to be parts of rabbits. However, upon closer
examination, the pieces were determ ined to be cat parts, adding yet
another layer of strangeness to Toft's deliveries. St. Andre also
delivered Mary of a supposed cat or rabbit rectum which contained
pellets resembling rabbit dung. During his examinations, St. Andre
was not too concerned with the individual parts Toft seemed to be
producing. Instead, he was interested in the fact th a t Mary Toft did not
exhibit the usual symptoms th a t accompanied women in childbirth;
there was no fluid or blood discharged in delivery and only a little milk
in Mary's breasts. Searching for an explanation for her odd deliveries,
he settled upon Mary Toft's right Fallopian tube. St. Andre concluded
th at the rabbits and other parts had passed from the uterus to the
Fallopian tubes. Because they had been delivered directly from these
tubes, no fluids would have been needed. Upon his return to London, St.
Andre reported his explanation of Toft's births to the King. It is curious
th at St. Andre seemed to pay little attention to the fact th at Toft was
breeding rabbits, cat parts and rectums instead of babies. For St. Andre,
merely finding a "scientific" explanation for the few symptoms of
pregnancy in Toft was enough to explain the entire situation.5
St. Andre's findings and reports, published and circulated in a
purchasable pam phlet, brought more doctors to Guilford, including
Cyriacus Ahlers, a German surgeon who delivered rabbit p arts as well.
Mary Toft's deliveries had convinced at least three doctors, m ost of
whom had published pam phlets on the m atter, when Richard
5In relating the specifics of the even ts surrounding Mary Toft's deliveries I
necessarily follow the lead of both Seligm an and Leslie. However, my an alysis
sign ifican tly differs from theirs.
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M anningham, one of the most famous eighteenth-century male-
midwives, arrived in Guilford. M anningham was sent by George I to
corroborate St. Andre's findings. Checking on the delivery had become
increasingly im portant because Mary Toft wanted to receive an annuity
from King George for her troubles. From the beginning of An exact
Diarv of w hat was observ'd during a Close Attendance upon Mary Toft.
M anningham reports th at he doubted the veracity of Toft's deliveries
and St. Andre's findings.6 M anningham asserts th at St. A ndre's
explanation of the part played by the Fallopian tube in Mary's delivery
was wrong; this was a troublesome and inaccurate explanation. Upon
his arrival in Guilford, M anningham was perm itted to examine Mary,
at first noting th at there did appear to be something present in her
uterus. He examined both her uterus and her Fallopian tube,
immediately rejecting St. Andre's hypothesis. The Fallopian tube was
not the im portant organ; M anningham was specifically interested in
M ary's uterus.
While attending Mary, M anningham witnessed a jum ping inside
of her, the effect of which was brought about by placing a hot towel on
Mary's abdomen. Initially, M anningham did not deliver M ary of
anything, and eventually the jum ping ceased. Later th at same day,
M anningham delivered Mary of w hat appeared to be pieces of a bladder.
According to M anningham ’s Diarv. the bladder marked the first
concrete piece of evidence to prove his suspicions because the bladder
the cover page of M anningham 's Diarv he proclaims to have w ritten as a
"Justification of my own Conduct." M anningham finds it necessary to m ake a clear
distinction between him self and the other doctors who had been duped. The
"justification" of his conduct becomes a way of proving that he never fell prey to the
fraud, but played along so that he could uncover the truth.
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had come from the vagina and not the uterus. In other words, it
appeared as if the bladder had been placed inside of Mary's vagina.
U ntil he could take something from the uterus itself, M anningham
would not be satisfied. Both Howard and St. Andre had both publicly
asserted the tru th of Mary's deliveries and, according to Leslie, both
physicians "assured M anningham th a t there was no fraud" (271).7
However, M anningham was dissatisfied w ith th eir reassurances and
began making comparisons between the piece of bladder he took from
M ary’s vagina and other bladders found in the house. M anningham
confirmed the substance of the m aterial, and then he waited to deliver
Mary of a rabbit which never arrived.
By the end of his exam inations in Guilford, M anningham believed
Mary Toft to be a fraud so he moved her to London in order to keep her
under closer observation. In London, Mary had fits of pain and
movement was seen in her abdomen, sim ilar to th a t at Guilford, but she
was not delivered of anything and nothing was found in her uterus.
M anningham writes th at he gave Mary a choice: she had either to
confess her sham, or to endure painful and dangerous experim ents to
7St. Andre staked his reputation on believing, reporting and proving the truth of
the rabbit-breeder. Howard, on the other hand, was involved in a much different way.
In Some O bservations Concerning the Woman of Godlvman In Surrv (London:
Printed for J. Jackson and J. Roberts, 1726), Cyriacus Ahlers suggests that Howard
may have conspired with Mary Toft, setting him self up to benefit m onetarily from his
"discovery" of the rabbit-breeder. According to Ahlers, Howard claim ed thaf'he hoped
His Majesty would be so gracious, when all was over, to give them a Pension as there
were many that had Pensions who did not deserve them" (13). Because this observation
is made in Ahler's public plea of innocence, he is not a reliable reporter. However, if
Howard truly believed that he could get an annuity from the king, then blame for the
rabbit-breeding scandal might be transferred from Toft to her physician. M edicine
fools itself, and Toft's body is even more distanced from the scandal. In other words,
because breeding rabbits might not have been her idea, Toft's body is silenced from the
very beginning of the hoax.
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uncover the true cause of her strange deliveries. Mary chose to confess.
In the Diarv. M anningham reveals th a t M ary's plot began when she
first m iscarried her child. In M anningham 's words, Mary is said to
explain the m iscarriage and subsequent deliveries as follows:
she was seiz'd w ith violent Floodings, and the Womb was then
as she thought open as if she had been ju st deliver'd of a full
grown Child, she did verily believe one of her wicked
Accomplices did then convey into her Womb p art of the Monster
(as she calls it) being the Claws and Body of a Cat, and the Head
of a Rabbit; this put her to much Pain; After th at time she
believed nothing was ever put into her Womb, but into the
Passage only, by the Advice of a Woman Accomplice whom she
has not yet named, and who told her she had now no Occasion to
work for her Living as formerly, for she would put her into a
Way of getting a very good Livelihood, and promised continually
to supply her with Rabbets I sic I, and should therefore expect part
of the Gain. . . (33-35).
M anningham 's sum m ary of Mary's confession reveals the motive
behind her curious acts: Mary's accomplice w anted to Find a "Way of
getting a very good Livelihood," closing a t least one part of the medical
mystery. A "monster" was placed inside of Mary by this "wicked"
accomplice, causing her great pain. From his exam inations,
Manningham was able to conclude th at Mary was in fact a medical
curiosity, not because she could give birth to rabbits, but because she had
the strange ability to introduce objects directly into her uterus. Because
she had been through childbirth before, M anningham concluded th at
Mary Toft knew how to feign labor. The foreign objects inserted into her
body would have caused the pain and jum ping th a t the doctors
subsequently observed. Toft, M anningham argued, had the experience
to embellish the rest. As a result of M anningham 's discoveries, Toft
was taken to jail on the charge of having tried to defraud the King.
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I w ant to suggest th a t Mary Toft was not imprisoned only because
she tried to extort money from the King; rather, Toft was sentenced to
prison because, a rural, sem i-literate laborer, her hoax had effectively
em barrassed prom inent members of the medical com m unity by calling
into question the veracity of scientific observation. The Toft episode
juxtaposed two very different discourses: medical science rooted in
observation and female fancy directly associated w ith female bodies.
Toft's body told a story th at the doctors had troubled interpreting as
fiction. Her hoax dram atically tarnished the reputation of at least three
doctors, including St. Andre, and spawned a series of pam phlets
lampooning the medical profession as a whole. In fact, the case was
such a notorious hoax th at Hogarth made it the subject of his print
"Cunicularii, or the Wise Men of Godliman in Consultation" (1726)
replete with a litter of rabbits running in the foreground. Toft was also
included in Hogarth's "Enthusiasm Delineated" (ca. 1761) and
"Credulity, Superstition, and Fanaticism" (1762); in the latter, rabbits
are running out from under Toft's sk irts.8 Even Jonathan Swift,
writing under the name of his fictional character Lemeul Gulliver, got
in on the act. In The Anatomist Dissected or the Man-Midwife finely
brought to Bed (1727). Swift expresses "Ihisl abhorrence of a late
diabolical Imposture, propagated, not so much by the knavery of some,
as by the ignorance and stupidity of others" (2). The absurdity of the
8For a discussion of "Cunicularii, or the W ise Men o f Godliman in
C onsultation” see D ennis Todd's "Three Characters in H ogarth's C u n icu la rii and
some Im plications” in Eighteenth Century Studies 16 (1982). In Hogarth: His Life. Art
and Tim es (New Haven: Y ale UP, 1971), Ronald Paulson w rites that in "Enthusiasm
Delineated," "Enthusiasm has become superstition; the ghosts are accompanied by
demonologies and various hoaxes like the Boy of Bilston who spewed nails and Mary
Toft who gave birth to rabbits" (301).
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situation is not th at Toft had tried to create a scandal, but that
physicians, St. Andre in particular, were willing and ignorant
participants. Swift claims th a t it is a "filthy miracle" th at male-
midwives are perm itted practice at all. The problem is not ju st th at the
male-midwives and physicians m is-read Toft's curious body. The
problem is th at medicine itself is based too loosely on conjecture and
observation. Male-midwives, Swift argues, should be the last ones to
diagnose female bodies; this practice is completely absurd and
unnatural. To illustrate the absurdity of the situation, Swift compares
St. Andre's "discovery" with w hat would have happened in his fictional
Laputa had such a debacle taken place. He writes, "Nay, it is ten to one
but he I the midwife I would be taken up into the floating island, and
appointed Anatomist extraordinary to the court of Laputa" (32). In other
words, the quack would have been praised at court, creating an
em barrassing situation.
As I have already mentioned, the doctors who examined Toft,
including Howard and St. Andre, quickly published pam phlets after the
exam inations to capitalize on w hat they had observed in Godalming and
Guilford. In so doing, they implicitly claimed a medical victory, inviting
others to w itness w hat they had "discovered." Through their narratives,
they invited others to look at, explore and probe Mary Toft's body in order
to confirm and to praise their own findings. Howard's initial invitation
to the curious, quoted above, m arks the point at which Mary Toft lost
control of her body. As soon as she became a "proven" oddity, she
became a (scientifically) m arketable commodity. A commodity
marketed by doctors while reaping no benefits for herself. Mary did not
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receive the annuity M anningham claims she desired. Instead, Mary
Toft’s body became the stage upon which medical science attem pted to
contain, regulate and exploit the pregnant body. And, when
M anningham decided to put an end to the charade, he did so by further
proving th a t M ary's body was not her own. M anningham elicited a
confession by threatening Mary with great bodily harm . He
transform ed Mary's body into a scientific object. By creating medical
narratives based on their findings, the practitioners juxtaposed medical
discovery and female narrative. The outcome can best be figured as the
desire to silence female stories.
Once put under medical supervision and confined to an
observation room in London, Mary could no longer m anipulate her
womb. Sequestered in the London brothel th a t functioned as
M anningham 's "hospital," contained by science and continually
observed by doctors, Mary could no produce the visual effects of her
fraud. Her body had been stilled and, most im portantly, her narrative
silenced. Even though it is clear th a t she no longer produced because
her pregnancy had been a fraud from the beginning, the fierce desire on
the p art of the duped medical men to uncover the fraud and
subsequently to distance themselves from it, m arks the gender divisions
of science th at were being drawn at the tim e. When a female body
challenged male knowledge, the solution was symbolically to silence the
body. Because her story countered official discourses— metaphorically
producing a narrative quite different from the one proffered by
M anningham — it had to be contained. M anningham 's Diarv and M ary's
confinement in London m ark the point a t which M ary becomes silent.
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Her body can no longer "produce" and her words are mediated. She no
longer tells her own story. In fact, Mary never "speaks;" instead her
words are conveyed through other people's narratives. W ith Mary silent
and the fraud exposed, all th at rem ained was for the doctors to claim
their innocence. They attem pted to do so by publishing pam phlets
suggesting th at they had known of the fraud from the beginning, and
had merely played along in order to expose Mary Toft. Medicine
regrouped, and the discourse surrounding the situation changed
drastically from a discussion of "discovery" to one of suspicion. Even
though they had initially endorsed each other's findings, the attending
doctors vied with each other for the honor of being the first to discern the
fraud.9 The case continued w ithout Mary Toft; the medical men publicly
separated themselves from M ary's silent, female body.
One can understand the femaleness of Mary's crime by reading
the gendered boundaries delineated by her incarceration. The Toft
episode— as represented by Mary Toft's body and the documents that
chronicled the story— exposes the shortfalls of medical understanding
precisely because pregnancy, a still m ysterious process, spawned
numerous and conflicting narratives during the eighteenth century. To
foil science in the most "female" way would necessarily dem and a spoof
of reproduction precisely because the gendered specificity of pregnancy
marks the female body as the site of difference, medical confusion and
9For a detailed discussion of this move to disclaim involvem ent see Leslie,
especially pages 273-275. Both St. Andre and Ahlers published retractions, and St.
Andre attem pted to vindicate his name publicly by taking out advertisem ents which
proclaimed his innocence. St. Andre and Ahlers regrouped after the discovery of fraud
and began to concentrate on all of the things that had made the case suspicious. They
make excuses for them selves, but never claim any responsibility for enabling the
fraud.
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159
potential disruption. If we recall Johnson's 1755 definition of womb--"to
enclose, to breed in secret"— we begin to understand ju st own tenuous
knowledge about birth was. The power of a the womb is figured as a
secret, and as I argued in chapter one, th at which takes place "in
secret" is th a t which has the most potential to compromise w hat is
perceived as the social order. Hence, to give birth to rabbits in a
narrative sense is to reenact the the eager desire of Hill's m other who
wanted to have "a strange Story in her Family." And, as we shall see,
this particular story had cultural currency.
There was already an advanced knowledge of reproduction and
the inner workings of the female body by the eighteenth century, but
much of medical science was still based on mere observation. In The
Birth of the Clinic. Michel Foucault notes th a t during the
Enlightenm ent, medicine relied on the language of pain, but this
discourse was soon translated into w hat was made visible: the "truth,"
science argued, could be discerned through the gaze and by visual
observation. That which was perceived by the eye was constructed as
medical science; almost nothing existed below the surface of the body.
Foucault writes: "The eye becomes the depositary and source of clarity;
it has the power to bring a tru th to light; as it opens, the eye first opens
the truth: a flexion th at m arks the transition from the world of classical
clarity— from the 'enlightenm ent'— to the nineteenth century" (xiii).
Foucault's attention to the eye, to the power of w hat is visible, helps to
explain Mary's well-constructed fraud. To the eye, Mary appeared
pregnant and her symptoms and deliveries looked and acted like typical
births. The doctors relied on the visible; they did not ask Mary w hat was
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happening, assum ing instead the "truth" of her pregnancy because they
could read the signs. Howard and St. Andre noted th at the products of
the birth were strange, but they never questioned the fact of the birth
itself w ith labor pains and movement. M ary Toft's body appeared
pregnant, so it was read and interpreted as pregnant. In effect, the Toft
hoax skewed the boundaries between the visible and the believable. This
may explain, in part, the medical practitioners' desperate need to clean
up th eir scientific debacle w ith the im prisonm ent of Mary Toft's body.
Since they had trouble containing her strange pregnancy, the
containm ent of her body begins to silence the em barrassm ent she
caused. We can read the incarceration Toft's body as an attem pt to
realign the borders between the visible and the real— to reestablish a
scientific narrative in the place of female desire.
RASH WISHES AND DEVILISH DESIRES
Mary "speaks" for for the first time only after the fraud has been
exposed. She does so in her published refutation, printed in 1727 for the
London publisher A. Moore. The refutation makes it clear th at Toft's
incarceration was not able to contain the public debates about her case,
nor was "silencing" her body the key to reconstructing the medical
boundaries between the visible and the real. Published under the long
title Much Ado About Nothing: Or. a Plain Refutation of All th a t has
been W ritten or Said Concerning the Rabbit-Woman of Godalming.
Being a Full and Impartial Confession from her Own Mouth, and under
her Own Hand, of the whole Affair, from the Beginning to the End.
M ary's refutation was presented as a "real" docum ent-the tru th of the
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rabbit-breeder affair. As such, it was positioned to stand in opposition to
the numerous pam phlets already published by the quack physicians and
surgeons who had attended her deliveries. The publisher strenuously
insists upon the veracity of the document, while the title informs us th at
the content comes from M ary's mouth, through her own hand, and is
"Full and Im partial." Much Ado About N othing is not intended to
adm it guilt; rather, it is presented as a "Refutation" to shed light on the
many ways in which Mary has been wronged. M ary's words, mediated
by the publisher, ultim ately suggest th at she has been made the victim of
an elaborate medical hoax.
The publisher's "Preface" claims th a t the pam phlet's purpose is
"to hear w hat the poor Woman has to say for herself, a t a time when all
Mouths are open against her" (6). In order to represent Mary in her own
words and with credibility, Much Ado About Nothing is w ritten and
spelled as close to M ary's own m anner as possible. Giving Mary a voice
would have been crucial because she had not yet been able to speak in
her own defense; even her supposed confession had be reported by
someone else. However, it is difficult to tell w hether Mary really speaks
for herself in Much Ado About Nothing, or if this document is yet
another piece of the fraud, aimed a t m aking fun of Mary's lack of
education and her failed attem pt to win an annuity. Following
Foucault's distinction between the visible and the real, I w ant to argue
th at we should read Mary's refutation as a valid document, while at the
same time considering it p art of a public hoax. Keeping both the visible
and the real in play, Much Ado About Nothing purports to articulate
Mary's own position, and, sim ultaneously, helps to expose the
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162
numerous ways in which M ary's body was continually silenced and
controlled both by medical professionals and by the pam phleteers. By
participating in the published debate and purporting to let her speak, the
publisher gives M ary Toft a voice even though it is mediated though the
intellectual world of the pamphlet. At the same tim e, the document
helps to focus the gendered dichotomies pointed to above by giving voice
to w hat we m ust assum e is Mary's perspective. By giving Mary a voice,
the publisher is able to lampoon the medical professionals who were
part of the fraud while providing a context for M ary's actions. The
publisher sides w ith M ary's silenced and incarcerated body against the
foibles of medicine. The publisher's sympathies, however, cannot erase
the way in which Toft's body and its imaginative context helps to silence
and to ridicule all potentially pregnant female bodies. Ironically,
Mary's words fu rth er silence her body.
Much Ado About Nothing constructs Mary as a victim, and her
words are her defense against those who are talking freely of her. In
particular, she needs to be defended from the doctors fooled by her
deliveries. The publisher reassures the audience,
that upon a m ature Recollection and Debate of the whole they
will set the Saddle on the right Horse, by letting their
Resentment fall on the true Imposters, or Quacks, and not on a
poor innocent Woman, whose M isfortunes they have made the
Cat's Paw of their Roguery. (8-9)
Like Swift, the publisher suggests Toft in not the true imposter, rather
the impostors are the "quacks" who effectively enabled her hoax. If
there m ust be villains in the situation, the "Imposters" and "Quacks"
are the ones who should be prosecuted and persecuted. At the same
time, the publisher points to the grotesqueness of M ary's crime by
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hinting a t the "cat's paw." In the publisher's scenario, the cat's paw
both represents the pieces inside of Mary, and the absurd rogues who
read the pieces th at came out of her as parts of an im portant discovery.
There is an overeagerness on the part of the publisher to make
sure th at the reader knows and understands th a t Mary Toft is indeed
the author of what he or she is about to read, th a t she n arrates her own
story. This is done, in part, by making sure th at the reader believes th at
Mary has been/is being persecuted by the public. But this is clearly not
enough; nor is it enough th at the title include the assurance th at Mary's
"own hand" wrote the document. The publisher is anxious th at the
public read the text as authentic. This drive for authenticity can be read
in the "Postscript," supposedly M ary's own words:
Thof I be ripurzentid as an ignirunt littira t Woman, as can
nethur rite no rede, yet I thank God I can do both; and thof
mahaps I cant spel as well as sum peple as set up for authurs,
yet I can rit trooth, and plane Inglish, wich is mor nor ani of um
all has dun. As for settin my Mark to a papur, it woas wen I
wont well, ans wos for goin the shortist wa to work: if tha had
axt me to rite my name, I wood hav dun it; but tha onli bid me
set my mark, as kinclooding I cood not rite my nam, but tha was
mistaken. (22-3)
The publisher's strenuous insistence on authenticity actually produces
the opposite effect, making the reader more suspicious of the
document's validity. As a result, we, as readers, are implicated in the
scandal because like the men who asked Mary to sign her confession
with a m ark— assum ing th a t she could not write her own nam e— we
assume th at she m ust be illiterate and ignorant and thus unable
coherently to construct a published document. But the publisher's
strategy is to make us feel uncomfortable with this assum ption and, by
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extension, call into question the tru th of the m arked confession, which,
he suggests, was executed in haste. Mary had obviously set a m ark to
an official document, and the publisher w ants to make it clear th at
because M ary can w rite— indeed, we are now reading her w riting— she
may have signed a confession too hastily. The question of authenticity-
the difference between a signature and a m ark, a literate and an
illiterate woman— is vital to the credibility of Much Ado About Nothing.
In order to separate ourselves from those who have been tricked, we are
cajoled into reading Much Ado About Nothing as M ary's own words.
As a result, Mary's w ritten refutation is able convincingly to
proffer two reasons for her innocence. F irst, it claims Mary's innocence
by suggesting th a t she was calmly m inding her own business when
doctors took hold of the situation and m anipulated it for their own
purposes. The narrative constructed in the refutation suggests th a t the
doctors themselves put the rabbit and cat parts inside of her body. Mary
can therefore claim th at she is a person, "hoo i is 1 as innosent of what I
am exkuz'd w ith, as the child as is unborn." She continues, "I here am
mad a sad C retur of by a parsel of surjohns, hoo, as all the world noes,
ar nun of the onnistist men; but I hope to clere myself, and shaim them
all" (11-12). In order to exonerate Mary, the refutation plays on an
already circulating d istru st of medical men and science. If all who are
reading Mary's refutation can agree on this point— th a t medicine and
doctors are not to be tru sted -th en her accusation th a t they committed
the fraud will be believable. The doctors have been dishonest, not Mary.
Their dishonesty is illustrated by recounting the details of Mary's
medical exam inations. The story of M ary's experience w ith the doctors
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who attended the birth is narrated. It is disclosed th at she was visited by
surgeons including "an ugly old Gentilm en, in a grate blak Wig" who
"fumblid and fumblid, but to no porpos, for all his grabbin and gropin
signefyd as much as nuthink" (14). From the refutation, we know that
Mary was probed many times, sometimes painfully. We are also told of
another surgeon who wanted to examine her w ith a "telluskop" but who
nearly fell and lost his instrum ent while bum bling through the
examination. Yet another "wonted to mak a Devils Damm of me, and
peept, and peept, the Devil peep his Eyes out, in hops to see a dansing
Devil cut a capor our of my Belli, but he was disapinted" (15-16). The
narrative describes incompetence, suggesting in M ary's words, how the
rabbits were placed inside her body: "But I protests I noe nothink of the
m attur, thay mowt put um thare for owt I noe, for I cant tell no mor
then the child as is unborn hoe I cum by um" (17). Like an unborn
child, Mary's position is one of innocence; things happened to her
without her knowledge or consent. Consequently, Much Ado About
Nothing paints a picture of medical science and medical men playing
out its foibles on female bodies.
Second, M ary's guiltlessness is claimed by using the discourse of
the imagination and its effect on pregnant women to explain how and
why she gave birth to rabbits. The imagination and its relationship to
the pregnant woman was a discourse with a long history, rooted both in
superstition and scientific observation. From the late sixteenth to the
eighteenth century, a woman's im agination was used as a common
explanation for births th at were out of the ordinary. Blame for a
disfigured or im perfect child was frequently placed on the im agination
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1
and thus taken out of the hands of medicine. This gesture transferred
responsibility from medical practitioners to pregnant women and
mothers whose m ental instabilities were thought to leave m arks on their
children. As we saw in Hill's example a t the beginning of this chapter,
shifting the responsibility for troubled births and deformed children onto
women frequently exonerated medicine and shielded its practitioners
from accusations of wrongdoing. If a midwife was in attendance a t the
birth of an imperfectly formed child, the burden of guilt might fall on
her instead of the pregnant woman; however, the "imagination" could
save a male doctor's reputation, and by 1727, the year in which Mary's
refutation was published, im agination was firmly a part of the cultural
discourse surrounding pregnancy. Indeed, by the time of Mary's
refutation, the im agination had become a common trope in both
literature and medical w riting.1 0 Mary's refutation plays on this trope:
Now I do sollymly deklar, th at to the best of my nolige, all this
has hapned to me for my rash wishis, and profan sw earin, and
saing Odd Rawbitt me, and such wikid wishis; tharfor I do
besech all Cristiun peple to tak worning by me, and not to wish
1 0 An early exam ple of this trope can be found in Shakespeare’s Richard III.
The play is set in motion by the fact that Richard was "Cheated of feature by
dissem bling nature./Deform 'd, unfinish'd, sent before my tim e/into this breathing
world, scarce half made up" (1.1, 1819-21). Having been sent too soon from his
mother's womb, Richard blam es his mother, the Duchess of York, for not properly
finishing the task of m aking him. Throughout the play, the Duchess of York is
frequently blamed for the deeds of her son. She m ust defend herself by claim ing that
her womb did no wrong: "He is my son--ay, and therein my sham e,/Y et from my dugs
he drew not this deceit" (2.2, 29-30). But the power of the womb to create monsters
remains an issue throughout the play. During the 1700s, writing about the imagination
became a popular, pseudo-medical trope. The most famous public debate took place
from 1727 into the 1730s between James Blondel and Daniel Turner, both members of
the Royal College of Physicians. Blondel asserted that a woman's health and mental
disposition could affect a fetus's well being, but not through rash wishes. He objected to
the notion that a woman's desire for a peach would irreparably harm the body of her
child. Turner supported the established belief that wanting a peach, and being
frustrated in that desire, could inflict bodily damage on a fetus.
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rash wishis for the futur, or to sware or curs, lest tha be
punishid for the sam. (20)
The portrait of the bumbling medical professionals might have been
entertaining, but Much Ado About N othing's gesture toward the power
of the im agination would have held much greater weight in disproving
the case against Mary Toft. Imagination, as a dangerous power, might
have had the authority to exonerate Mary from any guilt in her case
because having or exhibiting "rash wishis" was not a crime. Indeed,
the ability to m anipulate and control such wishes and their potential
effect on unborn children was considered a strange and awesome
power. As we shall see, the "imagination" was a t once empowering and
disempowering. Mary's refutation makes recourse to the inexplicable,
backed by pseudo-medical history, in order to illustrate ju st how little
medicine actually understood about the pregnant female body in 1727.
By the time Toft staged her hoax, women had been warned for
years about the power and danger of their im aginations. More
specifically, women had been continually cautioned against indulging
their passions and so-called "fancies" when pregnant. Conduct book
authors and medical w riters insisted th at by indulging their fancies
women would inevitably fall prey to patterns of behavior detrim ental to
themselves and th eir unborn children. Male conduct book w riters
suggested th a t a woman's increased sensibility was a detrim ent to her
mental health and ability to produce healthy children. As a result, their
books suggested th a t women should be monitored during pregnancy and
should concentrate on the beauties of pregnancy and motherhood rather
than indulge th eir own pleasures or fancies. Medical w riters echoed
these claims when scripting rules for proper female behavior, adding
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168
scientific reasons to their discussion of female appetites. These
appetites were frequently figured as dangerous indulgences th a t could
easily lead to sexual depravity and the loss of virtue. Protecting women
from their own desires was the explicit agenda of much conduct and
medical literature aimed specifically at women. Nothing is worse, these
books implied, than the encouragement of female fancy; it was the most
dangerous indulgence of a ll.1 1
"Fancy" is a specific and gendered term th a t has historically stood
in opposition to "imagination." Fancy, sometimes used interchangeably
with the phrase "female im agination," was seemingly distinguishable
from the type of im agination th a t connoted (male) genius. In The
Creative Imagination. Jam es Engell provides a concise history of the
distinction between "fancy and "imagination," illustrating the
connotative power of each term. For example, Engell points out th at
during the eighteenth century, "imagination" was the "more
commendatory term and it, more than 'fancy,' |w as| associated with
creative vigour and range" (172). Engell cites H ester Thrale Piozzi who
wrote in 1794 th at "An intelligent stranger will observe. . . th at although
we give sex very arbitrarily to personified qualities— yet he will
commonly find FANCY fem inine and IMAGINATION m asculine, I scarce
know why" (quoted in Engell 393n). Continuing her example, Piozzi
notes that Milton's Paradise Lost might be said to show "a boundless
IMAGINATION," while Pope's Rape of the Lock would be referred to as "a
1 J See chapters one and two of this study for a more thorough discussion of
conduct literature. See also Nancy Armstrong's Desire and Domestic Fiction. Mary
Poovey’s The Proper Lady and the Woman W riter, and Ruth Y eazell’s Fictions of
Modesty (Chicago: The U of Chicago P, 1991) for extended discussions of the
construction of "femaleness" and fem ale appetite.
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169
work of exquisite FANCY" (Engell 172). Piozzi articulates an arbitrarily
constructed and gendered distinction between fancy and imagination,
illustrating how the words were used in "conversational circles" (Engell
172). The gendering of Milton and Pope's works, it would seem, has
more to do w ith the subject m atter itself th an the gender of its author.
Pope's Rape of the Lock with its supposedly "feminine" subject m atter
fits into the world of fanciful literature, while Milton's more rigorous
and philosophical work is accorded the distinction of imagination. The
gendering of im agination relegates fem aleness to the world of fancy and
m asculinity to the world of genius.
Throughout the eighteenth and into the nineteenth century many
w riters, including Samuel Johnson, the E arl of Shaftesbury, and
Samuel Taylor Coleridge, articulated definitional explanations for w hat
Piozzi had suggested was an arbitrarily gendered distinction. Engell
points out th a t in his Dictionary (1755) Johnson articulated a gendered
distinction when he attributed to "imagination" "a meaning and a
dignity th a t he does not give to 'fancy'" (174). Imagination is
"conception, image of the mind, idea"; it is the genesis of an idea and
much more concrete than its more whimsical relative fancy (Engell
174). Even earlier, in his Characteristics (1711), Shaftesbury had noted
the distinction. Engell writes th a t in Shaftesbury's schema imagination
was the "stronger word"; fancy suggested "m ental abandon" (174).
Hence fancy seems divorced from intentional plotting, instead connoting
something unrestrained or unrestrainable. When Coleridge published
his Biographia Literaria in 1817 he, in effect, canonized the distinction
between fancy and imagination and firm ly illustrated the gendered
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170
divisions inherent in Romantic ideology and the definition of male,
poetic genius.1 2 Coleridge writes th a t "Fancy m ust receive all its
m aterials ready made from the laws of association," while im agination
"struggles to idealize and unify” (526). Hence, things th at are fanciful
come pre-formed and those th a t are im agined are more rigorously
sculpted into poetry. Fancy could not always be regulated, but the
imagination was figured as a specific and controlled act of creation.1 3
As M argaret Homans has observed of Coleridge's poem "The Eolian
Harp," when he "pictures the mind as the passive and feminine Aeolian
harp, its production is 'idle flitting phantasies’ rath er than
imagination" (28). Echoing Shaftesbury, Coleridge figures imagination
as the more restrainable masculine act of creating poetry while fancy is
situated as more firmly feminine than even Piozzi suspected.
M arie-Helene H uet argues in M onstrous Im agination, her
compelling analysis of the construction of m onsters and medical
discourse, th at by 1777, in France, the term im agination had been
*% n "Why Women Didn't Like Romanticism" ( The Rom antics and U s. Gene
W. Ruoff, ed. (New Brunswick: Rutgers UP, 1990)), Anne Mellor argues that this is
one of the reasons that women reacted so aversely to Romantic ideology. They objected,
in particular, to the rom antic im agination and rom antic love, especially the "self-
indulgent egotism" of the male poets (286). Mellor argues that the attachment to the
god-like " I AM" equated creativity to male genius and thus excluded women.
13ln Women Writers and Poetic Identity M argaret Homans argues that
female, Romantic poets positioned them selves against a m asculine poetic tradition by
reinvigorating the term fancy as a powerful source for fem ale im agination. In so
doing, they had to articulate a position in opposition to Coleridge's definition of the poet
as the "direct inheritor of God's self-asserting 'I AM"' (31). Coleridge's distinctions
between fancy and im agination were quite daunting and overtly gendered. According
to Homans, "Coleridge defining fancy as contrary and inferior to im agination, places
it among the 'essentially fixed and dead' objects opposed to the 'essentially vital'
imagination; it is a peripheral faculty that engages with externals, the 'Drapery' of
poetic genius o f which im agination is the soul" (81). Sim ilarly, "when Coleridge
seeks an im age of true, im aginative power, the mind is no longer fem inine or subject
to the whim s of the breeze itself: 'The primary IMAGINATION I hold to b e .. . a
repetition in the finite mind of the external act of creation in the infinite I AM"' (129).
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"rehabilitated" by Diderot's Encvclopedie as a "powerful creative agent
th at 'belongs to genius’ and spurs poetic 'fecundity'" (3). Before 1777, the
m aternal imagination had long been associated with w hat H uet calls
"whim or fancy." According to Huet, the female im agination was "one
of the most popular beliefs in the study of procreation" (4). As p art of
this belief, it was frequently argued that, in a Coleridgean sense, "the
m other's im agination reproduces w hat it see w ithout discrim ination,
without understanding" (25). Because it not appear to control or unify
images, the m aternal im agination was linguistically reduced to the
term"fancy"— semantically neutralized. H uet argues th a t the most
insidious effect the belief in female im agination produced was the notion
th a t women always create m onsters instead of m asterpieces. Medical
men, philosophers and poets figured female im agination as som ething
th at happens to women without intent.
The incapacity of the female brain to produce something
intelligible rather than sensible, or to im print ideas rath er than
forms on the child th at will be born also emphasizes the fact
that, however vast it may be, the role of imagination is entirely
devoid of intention— it has no teleology. (52)
But, as Huet points out, the m aternal imagination posed a contradiction
between power and power contained. On the one hand, a woman's
fancies could affect the child in her womb merely because she
"imagined" a frightening image or a horrifying story. On the other,
women were passive recipients of Coleridge's pre-formed images th a t
somehow worked their way into the womb. In other words, because the
im agination could act on women, it seems to rob women of agency. At
the same tim e, belief in the m aternal im agination accorded women a
certain visual, interpretive and bodily power.
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172
By the beginning of the nineteenth century, imagination had
become a key word to denote male genius. Both Huet and Engell agree
th a t the Romantic poets inherited the legacy of imagination from the
Enlightenm ent and refined its meaning. As Engell asserts, the Age of
Reason was transform ed in "what W ordsworth defined as im agination,
'reason in her most exalted mood'" (ix). According to Huet, the
Romantics erased the role of the m other to claim imagination for the
father. Their quest for creativity and expression is explicitly gendered by
the desire to figure the father as prim ary creator in both literary and
biological reproduction. If female fancy asserted the primacy of the
m other's will in affecting a child, effectively erasing the role of the
father, then Romanticism wanted to reassert the role of the father.
When teratology (the study of monsters) was finally invented as a
science in 1830, imagination was not included as a viable explanation for
so-called monstrous births. As Huet points out, excluding im agination
"also entailed the exclusion of the mother" in anything but the most
m echanical sense, reducing her to her womb (110). Imagination, she
suggests, was no longer m aternal; it took on the role of the "fantastic"
artist. The move from "fancy" to "imagination" m arks a linguistic and
cultural shift— the latter term is imbued w ith more cultural authority.
Being a t the mercy of fanciful whims is not a sign of cultural or creative
p o w er.1 4
14The distinction betw een "fancy" and "imagination" is sim ilar to the
relationship between depression and m elancholia that Juliana Schiesari traces in her
study The Gendering of Melancholia (Ithaca and London: Cornell UP, 1992). In her
analysis, Schiesari brilliantly dem onstrates the different cultural value accorded
each term . Women get depressed, she illu strates, while men are m elancholic. In fact,
m elancholia is often figured as a prerequisite for m ale genius, "a specific
representational form for m ale creativity" (8). W hile women have been defined as
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H uet argues th at it is precisely because women are too closely
linked w ith appetite and excess— ju st as doctors and conduct book writers
suspected— th a t the product of their wombs so m aterially illustrates their
fancies. The monstrous child itself is a representation of excess, of the
dangerous sublim ation of desire. In addition, the monstrous child
might be read as a rem inder th at women's fancies were dangerously out
of control. I would like to keep at the forefront this idea that the
imagination was a t once power and lack of p o w er-th at it represented a
fanciful double bind for women, illustrating a complicated web of
narratives. Women's fancy works against itself while at the same time
it seems to empower women. Im agination presents women w ith the
opportunity for creating stories for them selves while sim ultaneously •
suggesting th a t these stories are akin to Johnson’s literary children or
Coleridge's definition of fancy: pre-formed reproductions. The Mary
Toft episode helps to illustrate how these stories are continually
reinscribed, through competing narratives, into larger cultural stories.
The sim ultaneous power, weakness and danger of the female
imagination is the subject of one of the stories narrated in the
anonymously published The Wedding Night. Being Rules for
Procreation with a Method to Beget Hansom Children (1697), a female
companion to sexual intimacy as well as a pam phlet warning of the
dangers of m arriage and m otherhood.1 5 The text begins with a
incapacitated by grief and loss, men are "empowered" by loss and driven to
"capitalize" on their experiences (7). The result is a traceable and gendered legacy by
which the "cultural expression of women's losses is not given the sa m e .. .
representational value as those of men within the W estern canon of literature,
philosophy, and psychoanalysis" (13).
15The volume that 1 consulted in the Clark Library collection has no
pagination. W riting about this text, I have made an assum ption about the gender of the
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174
fascinating m etaphor for female pleasure before m arriage. Speaking
euphemistically about the garden of Eden, the author hints th at women
should find ways to enjoy pleasure, but should not invite a m an into
their garden before m arriage. If a woman waits to invite the man, then
the wedding night can be a true feast of pleasure: "The Wedding Night,
your whole Sexes Universal God-mother 'Tis true, like the F irst Fatal
Tree, it has its Forbidden Fruit, and with all the Temptation, and the
Fall: but not from the sin of tasting the Fruit itself; but the Forbidden
Guests you invite to the feast." The sin is not pleasure, if experienced
alone, but the "Forbidden Guests" invited before m arriage. The
Wedding Night's beautifully veiled warning reads like a treatise for
female m asturbation, at least before m arriage. Lest his readers find
this endorsement of female pleasure cause to blush, the author writes,
"We declare th at we have so carefully coucht the mystick Secrets, so
veiled our Venus, th at the most modest of your Sex, from the gravest
experienced matron, to the nicest speculative virgin, may read without a
Blush."
Modesty is firmly constructed as part of The Wedding N ight, at
least p art of its pretence. However, it is difficult to profess modesty when
the author's purpose is to enter a woman's bedroom with the specific
intention of discussing how children are created either male or female,
healthy or sick, vigorous or feeble.1 6 The author makes sure th at the text
author. I believe the author of The Wedding Night to be male because of the way in
which he positions him self in the above quoted passage. He is writing for women, but
from the perspective of one who assum es authority on female pleasure, who wants to
protect modesty and who can walk into a bedroom and observe without being in the
position of blushing him self.
10lt was widely believed, both m edically and culturally, that the am ount of vigor
used in intercourse could determine the health of the child. In addition, if the woman
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is constructed tastefully, not merely for prurient interests, by inviting
him self into the bedroom honorably and comparing him self to an
observer of nations or religions:
We present it [this book] to your hands as a Minion and
Favourite to please you. I confess our Great Theme adm its us
into the very inmost Penetralia of the Bed-chamber. However,
we make our awful E ntrance there, like an Archbishop or a
Lord-Chancellor to a Royal Labor: We press and approach as
close and as near even to the Great Birth itself, as may be
honourably done, without down-right Profanation of M ajesty
while keeping Love, Virtue, Constancy, Chastity and Fidelity in
mind (and m anner).
The w riter is assisting and attending in the bed chamber for the good of
the country, with the honor of royalty and the blessing of God. Under
such auspices, endowed with the authority of God, he can begin a
discussion of vigorous lovemaking and the proper positions in which to
beget healthy children: a combination of the sacred and the profane.
The author extolls the virtues of the m arriage bed, suggesting th a t "the
Unhappy depravity of the Age" can threaten the happiness of the
m arriage bed, but th at if husband and wife stay true, the m arriage will
not suffer. In addition, the author rails against "Licentious Parentage"
through which a "Polluted father Sacrificing his all to some Idol Dalilah
abroad, brings home scarce the offering of a Cain." The discussion of
sex and childbirth is virtuous in itself because its prerequisite is
m arriage; it implies a move from virginity to m arriage, from ignorance
was lying on her side during intercourse, she could alter or determine the sex of the
child depending upon which side she chose. The Wedding Night repeats m any of these
ideas including the belief t h a t , "the work of Generation must not be faintly or drowsily
performed." These beliefs lasted into the eighteenth century when they were slowly
dispelled, but not completely eradicated. For an excellent discussion of the m yths about
gender that circulated during this tim e see Thom as Laqueur's Making Sex
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 1990), especially chapter two, "Destiny is Anatomy."
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to knowledge. Along the way, "The woman th a t goes to Bed to a Man,
m ust put off Modesty with her Petticoat," m ust move fully into the
sexual relationship. Anything else, the author w arns, is a "Wedlock-
F au lt."1 7
The Wedding Night's discussion of the im agination begins w ith
the author's declaration against libertine behavior, which, he suggests,
is directly opposed to the sanctity of m arriage. The author believes th a t a
man should make love with only one woman— his w ife-and th a t there
should be no wasting of seed. He writes, "the tem peram ent of the mind
ever influences th a t of the Body. The sickness of the one always w anting
the other." For this reason, one should always be true to his/her spouse.
The power of tem peram ent is nowhere more evidenced than when a
woman is pregnant. Ju st as libertine behavior will tain t the mind,
"Languidness of the mother will affect the child in the womb." The
most im portant thing about conception is th at while in the act of
intercourse, and throughout the term of her pregnancy, a woman
should only look at things of beauty because beautiful objects never have
an adverse effect on a woman's im agination. Because the author
assumes th a t women are most dangerously susceptible to tem peram ent
when they are pregnant, it is vital to keep all objects of "horror and
cruelty" from them. Part of the knowledge of m arried life is the
understanding th at w hat happens to a woman has a deep and lasting
17t)aniel Defoe will echo these sentim ents in 1727 with his Conjugal Lewdness:
or. m atrim onial Whoredom (G ainesville Florida: Scholar's Facsim iles & R eprints,
1967). Like the author of The Wedding N ig h t. Defoe delineated "Wedlock-Faults,"
including sex between married persons th at did not produce children. He was
especially vehem ent on the topic of birth control. Sex without producing offspring, he
believed, turned all women into m atrim onial w hores.
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impact on the fetus she carries in her womb. This is the final, and
perhaps the most im portant, point stressed in The Wedding N ight. The
work ends with a discussion of monstrous births brought about by the
female im agination, the same kind of dangerous im agination th a t can
be traced in Mary Toft.
The final lines of the book tell a story of a woman whose husband
hurries home after parading in a church procession masked as a devil.
Eager to make love, the couple engages in sexual intercourse while he is
still masked. As a result, the woman's gaze is fixed on his devil mask
during intercourse. Nine months later when she is delivered of a child,
it comes out m onstrous and devil-like and runs around the room until it
literally frightens the m other and the midwife to death. This is much,
like the dancing devil to which Mary Toft refers in her refutation--a
monstrous offspring feared and desired by her doctors. In this scenario,
the woman's gaze and subsequent im agination create something
monstrous. The Wedding Night suggests th a t having controlled
generation of the child through vigorous intercourse is no safeguard
against the fright a m onstrous child is capable of producing. If this
story is a lesson to women about pregnancy and motherhood, then
thinking good thoughts and not making love to a m asked man become a
means of protecting oneself from death. Ultim ately, a woman m ust be
careful of her own im aginative power because it can literally kill her.
However, the troubling part of this story is th at the woman did not
herself imagine the devil— the image of the devil was placed before her.
Our fictional woman was passively handed an object of horror by her
husband. She had no agency in her imaginings; m erely looking upon
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the m ask was horror enough to produce a m onster. Because a woman
does not necessarily get to choose the objects of her powerful gaze, the
imagination is at once power and power neutralized. It is dangerously
in need of control; however, its passive m anifestation cannot always be
m anipulated. For women, the im agination presents a difficult double
bind; it represents both power and the lack of power sim ultaneously. A
woman could perhaps make things happen w ith her mind, but a t the
same tim e images beyond her control could significantly hinder her
power over the imaginative process. In other words women could fall
victim to imaginative whim at any time, but the cultural belief in the
m aternal im agination sim ultaneously provided women with a powerful
discourse with which to express th eir own desires, w hat Toft's
refutation refers to as "rash wishis."
Stories of monstrous births caused by female im agination are
repeated in various forms throughout the late-seventeenth and early-
eighteenth centuries. Increasingly, they become the justifications for
keeping women still and contained during pregnancy. As we shall see,
the power of the female imagination becomes something to be monitored
and controlled by medicine. The Ladies Dictionary (1694) uses the
female imagination as a means for prescribing this kind of protection.1 8
First, the author reports th at women m ust attend to the "exact
completion" of a fetus. Under the entry "Woman with child," the author
relates a story of a woman giving birth to a daughter with only one hand,
^ o h n Dutton (1659-1733) is the supposed author of The Ladies Dictionary.
though the precise authorship is not known. Another possibility is John Newberry
whose initials are on the inside of the edition at the Clark Library. In either case, both
of the authors discussing the im agination are men.
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mimicking the exact wound the mother had earlier seen on a soldier.
In an even more dram atic report, a pregnant woman who begs her
husband to perm it her to watch the beheading of ten men falls into labor
upon completion of the executions and gives birth to a boy whose head is
separated from his body. The author notes th a t these incidents are from
"Imagination or the two [sicI strong and boisterous midwife" (475). The
unsuccessful births were caused by female mismanagement: either the
m other’s im agination was m ishandled or the midwife botched the
deliveries. The entry further suggests that in both of the cases, the
monstrous births could have been avoided if the pregnant woman had
been sequestered, put to bed or kept inside the home for the duration of
her pregnancy. The author cautions: "Women's Fancies we m ust allow
to be very strange, if it can transpose the parts of the fetus and make it a
Monster, or turn Executioner in the womb" (478). As a result of these
fancies, protecting a woman from her own im agination is vital;
protection through confinement is this author's solution.
It is unclear to what extent Mary Toft would have been fam iliar
with these stories, but the confession of her own imaginative power
reveals some belief th at merely wishing som ething could explain her
feigned delivery of rabbit parts. Mary's recourse to the imagination did
not save her from incarceration, but the implied possibility of
imaginative births may have been among the motivations which held
the interest of the doctors who delivered Mary of rabbits and the
intellectuals and a rtist who lampooned these doctors. Even though the
im agination was not claimed as p art of M ary's defense until the
publication of Much Ado About Nothing, the men attending her would
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1
have been aware of, and might have believed in, the power of the mind in
reproduction. And from M ary's confession, we can glean th a t women
themselves may have been attracted to this superstitious explanation for
monstrous births. As in The Wedding Night and The Ladies Dictionary,
the im agination could be a source of immense power for women while at
the same time it could be turned against them to still their bodies. At
once, it could be an excuse and a privilege not yet explained by medicine.
Indeed, for women it may have seemed like the last un-medicalized
component of the birthing process. The secrecy of the womb exhibited
unexplained powers, including its ability to "turn executioner." This is
not to assume th at everyone believed in its power to transform a fetus in
the womb, but to suggest th a t when Mary Toft's refutation was
published the cultural belief in im aginative powers was strong enough
to support such an explanation.
GENDERED KNOWLEDGE AND FEMALE FANCIES
Hugh Sm ith's Letters to M arried Women, on N ursing and the
M anagem ent of Children, first published in 1767 and reprinted well into
the nineteenth century, indicates ju st how persuasive, and gendered,
the notion of imaginative powers was in eighteenth-century England.
Sm ith's text reveals th at medical practitioners and their female patients
experienced very different relationships to the discourse of the
imagination. According to Smith, women wanted to exploit the
connection between what they experienced and the children they
produced. Therefore, medical practitioners (men of genius) had to teach
women responsibility for th eir actions by disabusing women of their
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m istaken belief in the imagination. Smith argues th a t male, medical
practitioners had to neutralize any power proffered by imaginative
beliefs, even if this power only resided in women's own minds. He
constructs a medical n arrative counter to the im agination in order to
argue th at women m anipulate this m istaken belief too much to their
advantage. As a result, Smith inadvertently points to a threatening
female power.
Letters to M arried Women begins by claiming th a t women would
be upset if medicine disproved the popular belief th a t the disappointment
of their longings could m ark the "infant" in the womb. That his
audience is made up of women requires him to walk on dangerous
ground. In Sm ith's estim ation, women take too much pride in their .
imaginations. He addresses the precariousness of his position: "should
any one. . . presum ptuously dare to deny this am azing peculiarity in
pregnant women, and the consequent effect upon the embryo, he must
expect nothing less th an the general censures of the female world" (11).
Scorn, however, is a fair price to pay for ensuring th a t such "chimerical
notions" no longer hold medical currency. As a medical man, Smith
feels obliged to challenge the varied longings encouraged by a belief in
female, imaginative powers, and he softens the blow by being effusive on
the pleasures of motherhood and the beauty of mothers; in different
places Sm ith refers to women as "my delicate fair ones" and "charming
creatures."
In his medical practice, Smith has observed the im agination
invoked to excuse the birth of imperfect offspring. The imagination, he
writes, is a convenient excuse: "How often do women rack th eir minds,
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to find out the origin of these marks! which evidently proceeds from
their aversion to be thought capable of producing an offspring with any
imperfections" (18). Women's vanity, he concludes, is the motive behind
such an im plausible, pseudo-scientific excuse. In Sm ith's scenario,
women blame th eir im aginations for th eir imperfect offspring instead of
taking responsibility themselves or looking for more "natural"
explanations. Women, Smith argues, do not w ant to believe th a t an
imperfect child can come from their bodies. Consequently, women's
infatuation with the imagination is believable because their vanity
dictates th at it be so. Making this argum ent, Smith ignores the
possibility th a t women were blamed, by family and society, when a baby
was born with imperfections. He ignores women's desire to plot their
own narratives ("to have a strange Story in I the! Family"). Instead,
Smith writes th at the imagination is one of those "credulous
infatuations" which he can contradict by appealing to "attentive and
intelligent readers" (33). Smith's refutation and explanation will, by
showing "natural" causes not attributed to the imagination, put such
notions to rest. By relating a plethora of incidents where women are
delivered of unm arked children after traum atic events, Smith will
extricate power from the im agination~a female discourse— and resituate
it in the male discourse of medicine.
Smith announces his agenda for neutralizing the im agination's
power by positing an unqualified belief th a t all women should be
mothers. In Letter III, "Of M iscarriages," Sm ith writes: "The desire
for children is evidently predom inant in alm ost every female disposition:
it m ust be certainly owing to the wise ordination of Providence, th a t their
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education is so admirably calculated to encourage this fondness" (34).
In the same letter he suggests th at "a charm ing offspring will assuredly
contribute to unite parents in the lasting bonds of friendship" (36).
Because he has "reason and truth" on his side, Smith feels confident in
such assertions. Smith addresses his rem arks to an educated, middle to
upper-class female readership, "Women of delicate form and too great
sensibility" (37). These women are "the m ost liable to miscarry: such
also are the most likely to imbibe, and to be affected by, the prejudices we
there wished to caution them against" (37). Most likely to fall prey to
m iscarriages and the miscarriage of belief, these delicate women need
to be educated away from their imaginations. Obviously, Smith is not
speaking of Mary Toft when he writes of these women, though he
assum es a continuum of female education across classes which breeds
ignorance of medical knowledge. Sm ith suggests th a t "we have heard
th at these strange cravings are not altogether confined to the palate,
they sometimes extend themselves to equipage, jewels, dress, baubles,
etc" (15). In other words, the female im agination might have been a
place from which women could give birth to their own desires. As
Smith suggests, Mary Toft's desire for a rabbit as a culinary delicacy
could easily be transform ed into another woman's desire for a fine
carriage.
In The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle (1751), Tobias Smollett
mocks such a transform ation and, in so doing, he marks a distinction
between male genius and female im agination. W ithin the first fifty
pages of the novel, Smollett writes of two women who freely m anipulate
culture's superstitious belief in the im agination to authorize their own
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fancies. They use the discourse of the im agination (here called female
fancy) to author their own desires. In the first example it is clear th at
such a belief is constructed by the different m anuals w ritten about
pregnancy and childbirth th at were circulating in the eighteenth
century. Upon finding th a t her sister-in-law, Mrs. Pickle, is pregnant
shortly after m arrying her brother, Mrs. Grizzle, resolute in her
determ ination to carry on the family name, m akes safeguarding the
pregnant woman her responsibility. To this end, Smollett reports th at
she purchased Culpepper's midwifery, which, with th a t
sagacious performance dignified w ith A ristotle’s name, she
studied with indefatigable care, and diligently perused the
Compleat House-Wife, together w ith Quincy's dispensatory,
culling every jelly, m armalade and conserve which these
authors recommend as either salutary or toothsome, for the
benefit and comfort of her sister-in-law, during gestation. (21)
Mrs. Grizzle is poised to follow all of the advice proffered by such
manuals and consequently restricts Mrs. Pickle's diet by keeping her
from all the foods th at Culpepper and others suggest might do the
pregnant woman and her child harm. Mrs. Grizzle readily believes th at
such restrictions of diet and, more im portantly, female longing, or to
use Sm ith's word, "fancies," can adversely affect an unborn child. An
incident in which Mrs. Pickle plucked a peach for herself and "was in
the very act of putting it between her lips" illustrates the lengths to
which Mrs. Grizzle will proceed in order to keep her sister-in-law
happy. Mrs. Grizzle knows th at Mrs. Pickle should not eat the peach;
however, she also understands what it would mean to frustrate Mrs.
Pickle's desire to do so. Mrs. Grizzle stops her sister-in-law from eating
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the peach, yet this is not an adequate solution to the problem. Smollett
mocks:
[Mrs. Grizzle's] request was no sooner complied with, than
recollecting th a t if her sister's longing was baulked, the child
might be affected with some disagreeable mark, or deplorable
disease, she begged as earnestly th a t [Mrs. Pickle] would
swallow the fruit, and in the mean tim e ran for some cordial
w ater of her own composing, which she forced upon her sister,
as an antidote to the poison she had received. (21)
This episode sets the stage for the m anipulations th at will follow.
Having been taught the fears th a t a pregnant woman's body and mind
inspire, Mrs. Pickle will use this knowledge for her own purposes. She
uses the knowledge to drive her sister-in-law crazy and to procure the
m aterial goods th at she desires. Sm ollett tells his readers th at Mrs.
Pickle uses Mrs. Grizzle's "excessive zeal and tenderness" strategically
to achieve her own "ease" and a little time alone.
Mrs. Pickle creates longings for herself th at Mrs. Grizzle will
have to pursue either at great distances or with difficulty. In one
situation Mrs. Pickle desires a pineapple. Mrs. Grizzle tries to dissuade
her from this desire, explaining th a t many people are allergic to the
fruit. At first, Mrs. Pickle appears to desist from her longing. The next
day, however, Mrs. Grizzle, having learned to read longing on Mrs.
Pickle's face, senses th a t her sister-in-law is in want of something.
Mrs. Pickle relates th at she dream t all night of eating pineapples. This
relation sends Mrs. Grizzle into transports of pleasure in which she
"clasped [Mrs. Pickle I in her arm s, and assured her, w ith a sort of
hysterical laugh, importing horror rath er than delight, th a t she could
not help screaming with joy because she had it in her power to gratify
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her dear sister's wish" (22). Mrs. Grizzle sets off on a three-day pursuit
of pineapples-an adventure th a t Mrs. Pickle slightly regrets. However,
Mrs. Pickle's regrets do not keep her from playing on her sister-in-law 's
concerns. The construction of Mrs. Pickle's desires, Smollett writes,
"leaves it at this day a doubt w hether she was really so whimsical and
capricious in her appetites as she herself pretended to be" (24). These
appetites increasingly become more complex and m aterial: "her
longings were not restricted to the dem ands of the palate and stomach,
but also affected all the other organs of sense, and even invaded her
im agination, which at this period seemed strangely diseased" (24).
D uring her pregnancy, Mrs. Pickle's fancies range from plucking hairs
from the chin of Mr. Pickle, to the acquisition of a porcelain chamber
pot. By the time she gives birth to her son, Peregrine, Mrs. Pickle has
rath er cunningly utilized the im agination and her assum ed fancies to
trick her sister-in-law, and to mock the pseudo-medical texts upon
which Mrs. Grizzle relied for advice.
Mrs. Trunnion does not reap the same benefits when, while
pregnant, she tries to use her fancies to procure m aterial goods.
Smollett writes th at Mrs. Trunnion viewed the time of her pregnancy as
"the proper season for vindicating her own sovereignty, and accordingly
employed the means which nature had put in her power" (47). Within
her m arriage, Mrs. Trunnion has power only while she is pregnant;
hence her pregnancy affords her the opportunity of demanding some of
the things to which she feels she is entitled. Mr. Trunnion desperately
w ants a son and therefore will do w hatever is necessary to satisfy his
wife’s longings. Mrs. Trunnion's use of the im agination is depicted as
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beyond cunning. Unlike Mrs. Pickle, Mrs. Trunnion is not trying to find
time alone by sending her husband on long errands. Smollett's
depiction of Mrs. Trunnion suggests m ere greed and malicious
m anipulation:
There was not a rare piece of furniture and apparel for which
she did not long; and one day as she went to church, seeing Lady
Stately's equipage arrive she suddenly fainted away. Her
husband, whose vanity had never been so perfectly gratified as
w ith this promised harvest of his own sowing, took the alarm
immediately, and in order to prevent relapses of th at kind,
which might be attended with fatal consequences to his hope,
gave her leave to bespeak a coach, horses and liveries to her own
liking. (47-8)
Mr. Trunnion's "philosophical resignation" to his wife's fancies are
enabled by his belief th a t he will be rewarded with a son. Yet his desire
for a son does not keep him from observing th a t Mrs. Trunnion's fancies
"sometimes soared to such a ridiculous and intolerable pitch of
insolence and absurdity" (49). Regardless of the absurdities, he satisfies
her m aterial desires. When the time comes for Mrs. Trunnion to give
birth, she goes through two false labors, after which a male midwife is
called in; the male midwife "boldly affirmed th a t the patient had never
been w ith child" (50). Mrs. Trunnion's pregnancy is perceived as an
hysterical fit by the male midwife, though the female midwife still
affirms th a t the baby is due at any time. Mrs. Trunnion's labor pains
persist for three weeks before she and her husband become the joke of
the parish. Obviously neither the female midwife nor the female patient
know anything about birth. In creating this scenario of pregnancy,
Sm ollett mocks midwives and a pregnant woman's im agination a t the
same time.
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In his essay "Pineapples, Pregnancy, Pica and Peregrine Pickle."
G. S. Rousseau refers to Mrs. Grizzle as "ridiculous." He writes: "A
'diseased im agination' in the m other, Mrs. Grizzle would have argued,
produced inferior progeny" (79). Later Rousseau writes of the
"ridiculous actions of the women" involved in the discussion of roots,
peaches and pineapples (81). Women are mocked, Rousseau w rites, but
this is no reason to believe th at "Smollett was distorting or ridiculing
contemporary theories of embryology" (81). Indeed, the essay th at
follows is an homage to the many medical discourses, ideas and
superstitions w ith which Smollett was fam iliar. The ridiculousness
th at rem ains is not medicine itself, nor Smollett's reconstruction of
medicine, but the women who believed in its less-than-scientific notions.
Rousseau concludes:
I Sm ollett's I satiric portraitures of characters such as Mrs.
Pickle, Mrs. Grizzle, and Mrs. Trunnion place great dem ands
on the modern reader who wishes to comprehend the author's
powerful wit. But his contemporary reader would have felt
much more at home than we do in viewing his comic spectacle:
they would have realized th a t he was using medical and
scientific learning for pure levity and genial farce, and in this
sense would have read his works as they were reading those of
his great contemporary, Laurence Sterne. (108).
To be read as a great satirist, especially w hen satirizing women's bodies
and beliefs, illustrates the greatest literary success.
The "comic spectacle" Rousseau reads takes place on the bodies
and minds of women, and at their intellectual expense. He seems to
m isread Sm ollett when he makes his argum ent. Instead of suggesting
th at Mr. Trunnion has been outsm arted by his clever wife, Rousseau
argues th a t women themselves have too easily and uncritically accepted
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popular, pseudo-scientific and ridiculous beliefs. Similarly, Smollett
seems to m isread his own characters w hen he mocks women's fancies.
In w riting Mrs. Trunnion's hysterical pregnancy and mocking
women's im aginative fancies, Smollett overlooks the power of the
im agination to sim ulate the signs of pregnancy-to skew the borders
between the visible and the real. This is not to argue th a t Mrs. Trunnion
was really pregnant, but to suggest th a t in his zest for exposing the
sham of the imagination and the ignorance of women, Smollett too
easily mocks the potentially pregnant body. He also overlooks the
powerful investm ent-both in terms of narrative authority and the ability
to authorize their own desires— th a t women may have had in their belief
in the imagination. Smollett does suggest th a t Mrs. Trunnion uses her
pregnancy as the m eans "which nature had put in her power" to retain
some of her sovereignty; however, at the same time he mocks this little
bit of power and, by making fun of it, rid it of its authority. Aside from
Mrs. Pickle's sly facial expression, there is no reason to read women as
anything less than ridiculous in Peregrine Pickle. Rousseau's desire to
construct Peregrine Pickle as an homage to Smollett's wit and vast
medical knowledge erases the problematic way in which his own
criticism takes part in mocking female minds. Smollett recognize th at
women exploited the belief in their own im aginations because they could
gain power from this pseudo-scientific discourse, but by illustrating
fancy's ridiculous transform ations (from the desire for fru it to the desire
for a carriage) he figures the female im agination as nothing but an
excuse to demand life's petty conveniences.
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Isaac Beliefs Letters. On the Force of the Imagination in
Pregnant Women (1765) confirms Smith's, S m ollett's and Rousseau's
position th at most men believed women made recourse to their
im aginations only because they were ignorant of other medical and
n atu ral causes for imperfect children. Like Smith, Bellet suggests th at
calmly explaining "natural" causes for unnatural births will wean
women from their im aginations. B eliefs purpose, he writes, is a
"rooting out the prejudice of the imagination;" his belief is th at
"education will dispel this I prejudice I" (2). Bellet, and other medical
men, clearly had a stake in setting superstitions about the imagination
to rest. In his address to readers, Bellet recognizes th at he is standing
on the same shaky ground from which Smith wrote. It is obvious to both
men th at they will have to address their texts to women while a t the
same time taking care not to insult their readers. However, unlike
Smith who exhibited evidence for why women believe in the
imagination, Bellet begins w ith the assum ption th at all women m ust be
ignorant of medicine and philosophy to believe in such superstitious
nonsense. To his readers, Bellet w rites, "The ladies will, I hope, forgive
me, if I rank them in this lignorantl class" (ii). He m ust treat women as
ignorant in order to justify his construction of a philosophical work
w ritten for lay people; a work designed more for instruction than
philosophical edification. B eliefs text is part medical and philosophical
treatise and part conduct book, and its stated purpose is to make sure to
eradicate, or at least to explain, the fear of the imagination by replacing
superstition with medical fact. Bellet wants to explain this fear by
replacing it with a discourse of medical and physical "accidents."
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Women should not be so invested in im aginary fears, Bellet argues,
because "through the fear of im aginary m isfortunes they suffer real
ones" (2).
Beliefs attention to the "fear of im aginary misfortunes"
inadvertently reveals much about the way in which the imagination
works. With the above statem ent, Bellet at once uncovers his belief in
the im agination's power while hoping to w rest this control away from
women. Bellet performs a double gesture: he acknowledges the
im agination while sim ultaneously hinting th a t it holds no real power.
He tries to suggest th a t the imagination does not cause real misfortunes,
but he reveals more about the imagination's power than about its
inability to make things happen. In effect, Bellet instructs women to
hold onto the very power th at male doctors and philosophers w ant them
to relinquish. If Bellet did not fear women's ability to invoke in the
imagination he would not have undertaken the task of questioning its
capabilities. As Toft's case has illustrated, a woman's recourse to the
im agination could call into question num erous medical observations
and the men who propagated them. In B eliefs scenario, imagination
works precisely by making a thing happen th a t would not have occurred
if a person had not willed it into being. In other words, fear appears to
create real misfortunes. Suggesting this connection, Bellet seems to
adhere to Jeanette W interson's belief in the power of fictions, and just
how tem pting it might have been to have a strange story in the family.
His text also seems to encapsulate the notion th at im agination itself was
constructed from a series of conflicting narratives th a t could be called
into question by the performance of strange deliveries. Hence, Beliefs
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ignorant female readers might not have been as ignorant as he assumed
them to be.
N o t s o s i l e n t b o d i e s
In 1750, a year before his formal attack on the Royal Society, Hill
published a satiric pam phlet entitled Lucina Sine Concubitu. subtitled
"A treatise Humbly Addressed to the Royal Society." From the
beginning, the pam phlet makes clear Hill's contem pt for the Royal
Society:
The great Encouragement you shew to all learned Investigations
of N ature (witness those excellent Treatises published every
Year in your Philosophical Transactions) emboldens me to lay
before you a Discovery, which, I believe, is entirely new, and
which I am sure will equal any thing th a t has been offered to the
World since Philosophy has become a Science. Excuse my
Presumption, and forbear your Censes till you have read my
Narrative. No less than fifteen Years of my Life have been spent
in bringing this Arcanum to M aturity. And when both Theory
and Practice had confirmed me in it, my first Thoughts inclined
me to go over to France, and put up for the Prize at Bourdeaux,
where Philosophers shew Problems, as G ardeners do
Carnations at a Florist's Feast. But considering with myself,
th at your illustrious Society might, probably, esteem yourselves
affronted, if you had not the Maidenhead of my Secret, and at the
same time disdaining to come in Competition with the lower
Race of Philosophers, who write about Tides and Eclipses, and
Laws of G ravitation, the trivial Amusement of idle Speculatists,
and Almanack-makers! I say, out of Reverence for your
em inent Body, and some Degree of Pride in Conjunction, I
resolved to appeal at once to the Public, and more particularly to
address myself to your Worships. (3-4).
Hill begins his pam phlet by m arking a distinction between French
Philosophical findings and those of his own country. His satirical tone
indicates th a t the floral shows he describes in Bourdeaux, where
scientists speak of "Tides and Eclipses, and Laws of Gravitation" are in
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fact preferable to the "Speculatists" who reign in England and who
dominate the papers published by the Royal Society. When he accuses
those in France of being mere "Almanack-makers," his tone implies
th at he is speaking of his own countrymen. The "Worships" to whom
Hill addresses his finding are held in disdain; the "excellent Treatises
published every Year in [ their 1 Philosophical Transactions" are not to be
taken seriously. And, when he honors the organization by providing
them with the "Maidenhead of [his I Secret," Hill is positioning the Royal
Society as a lewd confidant of illicit truths. One might even suggest th at
Hill has positioned the Royal Society as a panderer of lurid, pseudo
scientific u n truths.
This role is made even more lurid w ith the subject of Hill's
lampoon: the possibility for women to give birth without having had
sexual intercourse w ith a man. Hill relates being called to the house of
a country gentlem an who claimed th a t his daughter was ill and in need
of a doctor. When Hill arrived at the house he discovered th at the girl
was not sick, but with child and "very near the Time of her Labour" (5).
When Hill related his discovery to the father, he was horrified and,
rushing into the girl's room to confront both the daughter and her
mother, "upbraided [themI in the bitterest Terms, for concealing so
im portant a secret from him, and bringing such a Disgrace on the
Family" (5). Hill reports: "The young lady turned up a Face of
inexpressible Innocence and Amazement, and im m ediately fainted
away into her M other's Arms" (5). The girl's m other became indignant
over the assault to her daughter's reputation and Hill left the house
before the situation became too dram atic. The next day, Hill was called
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back to the house to deliver the child a t which time he recalls th at the
girl protested her innocence, but "Affairs were too far advanced to be
concealed" (6). The girl was delivered of her child, and Hill decided to
prove how a woman could give birth w ithout having had "commerce"
w ith a m an.
Reasoning his way through his p atien t's virgin birth, Hill
uncovers an article by "Mr. Woollaston," supposedly published by the
Royal Society, who claimed to have witnessed already formed, m iniature
human beings floating through the air. According to Hill, Woollaston
claimed th a t semen could be separated from the male's body and put
into the atm osphere, at which time fully grown beings could enter
through the mouth of a woman and settle into a fetus. Hill constructs
Woollaston’s paper as a representation of absurd findings presented to
the Royal Society, claiming th at his own evidence for "Lucina Sine
Concubitu" was gathered by putting Woollaston's theory to the test.
Intending to prove Woollaston's claims, Hill performed an experim ent
on a cham berm aid whereby after strain in g the "Animalcula," or fully
formed hum ans, from the air he adm inistered an oral dose to the girl.
As a result of his experiment, the cham berm aid became pregnant,
causing her some alarm since she had not been with a man for over
three years. With the success of his experim ent, Hill claims to have
proven the possibility of birth. Hill writes:
Thus, Gentlemen of the Royal Society, I hope I have proved, in
the m ost incontestable m anner, th a t a woman may conceive
w ithout any Commerce with man; th a t the World has been in an
Error for six thousand Years, and, probably, would have
continued in it six thousand more, if I had not been born on
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purpose to break through silly Prejudices of Education, and
undeceive Mankind in so m aterial a Point. (17-18)
H ill’ s spoof moves away from the im agination, but stays well
within the realm of the relationship between women and medicine with
which this chapter begins. It is fitting th a t Hill mocks the am ateur
nature of the Royal Society by constructing a narrative about a pregnant,
female body. By 1750, the pregnant body could only infrequently speak
for itself. Instead, it was spoken of in medical and pseudo-medical
pam phlets alike. As I have already suggested, the mid-eighteenth
century was both a time of stilling the pregnant body and of advancing
medical knowledge about gestation and birth. Poised on the brink of
medical innovations to come, Hill's use of the silent pregnant body
would have been a poignant rem inder of ju st how little was actually
known about birth. In addition, by addressing his attack to the Royal
Society, Hill was attem pting to discredit much of the published w riting
about pregnancy. Hill uses the female body to spoof science because it is
readily available for this purpose, and the spoof further silences the very
body for which he speaks. If we recall M ary Toft's experiences of being
prodded and explored, we find th a t she hints at the eighteenth-century
medical attitude toward female bodies. Ready to be explored and
m anipulated by bumbling doctors, the pregnant body's availability for
medical discovery is always assum ed.
Mary Toft and the pregnant, but virtuous, bodies John Hill
imagines are connected by their implicit challenge to medical authority.
Mary's hoax confounded the medical men and curiosity seekers who
came to examine her. Reading her body as spectacle illustrates th at
vision is not always the discerning m easure of tru th , especially if we
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read her hoax, as I have been arguing, as a specifically female narrative
in opposition to the discourse of medical genius. I would argue th at
Toft's narrative precipitated the changes to medicine which would come
about in the early nineteenth century when physicians would begin to
ask questions instead of blindly believing the impossible. In addition,
her hoax's use of female im agination challenged and mocked pseudo
medical beliefs in as advanced a m anner as John Hill's satire. The
im portant difference between the two situations is the question of who
had the ability to speak, construct, and manipulate whose body. In
Hill’s scenario, female bodies are silent; he speaks for them , constructs
them as virtuous and uses them as the objects of his experiment. Hill's
is a subtle misogyny which relies on the availability of the female body to
prove the strangeness of male medicine. Mary Toft's scenario, on the
other hand, might illustrate the desire of one female body to speak for
herself. Even though her voice was secreted under many layers of
pamphleteering, Mary's case was able to challenge medical authority by
proffering a "speaking” body and, in effect, by using pregnancy as a
means to embroil medical men in its spectacle. The troubling possibility
is th at the results of both performances are effectively the same:
eighteenth-century medicine's desire to recoup and to contain female
bodies. The difference might be th a t Mary's body was subjected to a
overtly misogynist agenda, without the subtleties th at Hill employs. I
want to suggest th at by drawing seemingly rational doctors into the
spectacle of her body, the Toft episode a long-lasting im pression of
medicine as its own spectacle. Her body may have been sentenced to
prison, but the chaos and debates she inspired rem ained.
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If we return our attention to Mary's refutation, we can see ju st
how powerfully it positioned her body and the m aternal imagination
against the educated voices of male genius— doctors, w riters, publishers
and intellectuals. While Much Ado About Nothing might be part of the
silencing of Mary's body, of its m arginalization, it sim ultaneously
suggests th at her strange narrative had the power to disrupt the
boundaries I delineated earlier between midwives and medical men,
between pregnant bodies and science. We are not supposed to believe
th at Mary Toft gave birth to rabbits. Rather, I am suggesting th at the
confusion into which her hoax threw supposedly competent medical
professions can be read as an early indication of the struggles between
pregnant bodies and medicine's desire to regulate and monitor their .
activities. In the eighteenth century, male doctors had the authority to
decide the "truth" of hum an bodies. I have tried to illustrate th at by
destabilizing this "truth" Mary Toft's case can be made to articulate the
complex ways in which medical power was deployed in eighteenth-
century England. Foucault has argued th at part of reading history is
uncovering which kinds of discourses have been "authorized" and who
is allowed to wield them (Sexuality. 27). Male medicine claimed for itself
the authority to speak for and about female bodies, but the imprisonment
of Toft's body and the fierce desire on the part of Smith, Hill, and Bellet to
disclaim the im agination's specifically female power, indicate a fear of
the very bodies male doctors were supposed to understand, treat and
cure. More specifically, taken together, these moments indicate how
male genius tried to silence narratives of female desire. Toft's case
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reveals th a t the distance between female fancies and male science was
not as vast as medical practitioners wanted to claim.
By the end of the eighteenth-century medicine had transformed
itself into a legitim ate discourse of male authority, and had authorized
itself to rid science of its superstitious beginnings. As a legitimate
discourse, medical science had accrued, in Paula Treichler's words,
enough "linguistic capital" effectively to silence all challenges from
superstitious sources, including the female im agination. However, as
my analysis of Frankenstein in the following chapter will argue, there
was still hocus-pocus mixed in with scientific discovery and exploration;
while medicine was advancing, much was still conjecture. Though
chronologically prior to both Mary W ollstonecraft's Vindication and
Eliza Haywood's Miss Betsv Thoughtless, discussed in chapters two and
three respectively, the case of the rabbit breeder marks a shift in this
project from the eighteenth to the nineteenth centuries. The m ateriality
of Mary Toft's body helps to articulate a move away from propriety
toward more scientific methods of birth control. I argued in chapter one
that this move took place during the nineteenth century; in terms of
medical diagnosis, I have argued here th a t Toft's case might be read as
part of the shift away from reading the visible into a world where tru th
was m easured by th at which was hidden beneath the skin— a move
toward different narratives. As medicine and science moved into a new
century, and spectacular bodies were displayed in freak shows, female
authors had to engage in new prophylactic discourses in order to
construct different plots for their female characters. Wollstonecraft and
Haywood used propriety as the veil behind which they could construct
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female pleasure; Shelley, on the other hand, employed more radical
prophylactics. At stake in Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, as in Mary
Toft's hoax, is the very m aterial of female bodies.
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Chapter 5
Mary Shelley's Frankenstein:
Freak Shows and Home-made Prophylactics
200
The early-eighteenth century was a perfect time for Mary Toft to have
staged her birthing spectacle. The still speculative knowledge about female
bodies and the process of birth would have made Toft into a spectacular
representation of internal bodily functions still left unexplored by medical
science. At the same time, a desire on the p art of male practitioners to
stake their claim to midwifery would have made it difficult for them to
admit th at they did not understand the secrets of reproduction. Toft's
spectacular display— her body which reproduced rabbits instead of children-
-taunted a medical establishm ent th at still had not uncovered the mysteries
of the womb. The eighteenth-century was a time of great misconception,
and, as Thomas Laqueur has illustrated, a tim e in which malformed
children were attributed to the "ill-gotten" and "inadequate" thoughts of
women. Male ideas, Laqueur suggests, were integral to proper conception;
however, when a woman conceived an idea in reproduction, she delivered
"monstrous products of the womb" (59). In recreating m onstrosity, Toft's
performance illustrates one moment of a cultural dis-ease w ith science
and, more specifically, with pregnant female bodies. Furtherm ore, by
making a spectacle of herself, Toft exposed gaps in medical knowledge.
Mary Russo has argued th at women risk losing control of their bodies when
they make spectacles of themselves. She suggests th at "for a woman,
making a spectacle out of herself ha|s I more to do with a kind of
inadvertency and loss of boundaries" than w ith a deliberate, playful and
powerful desire to expose the artificial constraints of such boundaries (213).
Toft risked the spectacular; she performed w hat Russo calls the "female
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grotesque" by putting her pregnant body on display. As a result, Toft's
body, and the subsequent pamphleteering that, in effect, invited the public
to watch, help to illustrate a climate of scientific fascination and horror.
More specifically, Toft's display points to a fascination with the mysterious
m aterial of reproductive female bodies.
During the late-eighteenth and early-nineteenth centuries, the
hum an body was still a scientific mystery, but it was being probed more
thoroughly, dissected more often and treated for illness in more specifically
medical ways than at any previous time. Medical science represented both
a closed system of conjecture and a more m aterial site of discovery. As a
result, England's population was wary of medical advances while
expressing a keen interest in the monstrous m istakes of n ature and .
medicine alike. J. Paul H unter has observed th at science created a "raw
edge of cultural curiosity" during the eighteenth century (209). This
curiosity carried over into the first decades of the nineteenth century,
decades in which the full impact of scientific innovations were beginning to
be felt. According to H unter, "if the new science made the defeat of magic
and superstition ultim ately inevitable, it also heightened the taste for
wonder and made people cherish whatever record they could find that
confirmed uncertainty and mystery" (209). An unstated fear of what
medicine might discover or create made the public's interest in freaks,
monsters and oddities more acute. Desire for the freakish infected all of
eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century English society, from rural
laborers to cosmopolitan intellectuals, from shopkeepers to royalty.
Everyone wanted to w itness a good spectacle. As Richard Altick notes in
The Shows of London, "curiosity was a great leveler" (3).
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W ithin this context, Mary Shelley's Frankenstein (1818), like Toft's
strange deliveries, stages another spectacle about birth. Shelley's spectacle
illustrates the public's desire for and repulsion by real and imaginary
monsters by playing to the popular fears about science and medical
possibility th at were circulating at the beginning of the nineteenth century.
The scientific world th a t Frankenstein takes as its context affected the daily
lives of every British citizen, readers and non-readers like. Scientific
innovation and experim entation were frequently the stuff of verbal and
printed gossip. There was an entire literary industry dedicated to reporting
fanciful and frequently inaccurate accounts of individual observation
m asquerading as scientific explanation. H unter has characterized this
time as one of "wonder:"
The taste for "wonder" in life reproduced itself in texts; the worlds
of print and exhibition reinforced one another. The textual
celebration of wonders of all kinds— unusual hum an events, mind-
boggling freaks of nature, unexplained variations on patterns in the
natural world such as tem pests and earthquakes— fanned the desire
to see the exhibited wonders in London and a t the fairs: a wild boy
raised by bears, creatures th a t were thought half-hum an and half
som ething else, savages brought from the new world, "siamese"
twins, and other bits of the carnivalesque. (210)
Shelley, on the other hand, suggests that this was a time of both horror and
wonder. The very uncertainty of science opened up too many possibilities.
And the fact th at scientific innovation appeared to be a specifically male
pursuit left too many women unprotected.
In this chapter, I w ant to draw out a connection between the home as
it is represented by family and domesticity, and its opposite, the male world
of science outside the home. Monsters, I will argue, are figured as a direct
result of failed science, and by bringing such failures into the home, a
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female space, Shelley's novel articulates the danger th a t scientific
experim entation poses for women. I have argued throughout this project
th at contraception, propriety and the female imagination seem to offer
women control of their bodies and desires. At the same time, I have
suggested how such desires are discursively contained by these very tropes.
In Shelley's novel, the domestic represents a sim ilar double bind: a desire
simultaneously to subvert and to reconstruct narratives of normative family
structures. I will argue th at his double bind is evidenced by Victor's
refusal to construct a family for his creature and his deliberate dism antling
of his female creation. Shelley's narrative pushes against the construction
of a normative family th at conscripts women into a domestic ideal while at
the same time it seems to suggest th at the only way out of this domestic bind
is to destroy the potentially reproductive body.
Frankenstein. I will argue, illustrates how women become the
victims of male exploration and experim entation. Because women are
excluded from education and from scientific investigations, they are not
properly equipped to fight its monstrous offspring. In this case, women are
excluded from knowledge about man-made birth. As we saw in chapters
one and four, knowledge about birth was conceived as a gendered privilege.
By the beginning of the nineteenth century, women, in effect, had been
w ritten out of the medical and scientific world; they had become medical
patients instead of practitioners. Their pregnant bodies were probed as the
objects of medical observation. However, as I have argued, access to
medical knowledge was a highly contested issue. Shelley illustrates this
struggle by showing us w hat happens when women are not provided the
proper tools with which to defend them selves from scientific
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experim entation. At stake is women's reproductive function— their ability
to control reproduction and to use knowledge about their bodies and their
homes to fight monsters. Shelley's novel is not merely about who should
have the right to give birth; rather, it suggests th at women should be able to
choose not to give birth at all. Through an examination of the nineteenth-
century fascination with monstrosity, embodied in the freak show, I hope to
illustrate th at at stake in Shelley's novel is the very m aterial of female
bodies.
Frankenstein’s principal players are men on quests of discovery who
find and create horrors-m en who set out on supposedly adm irable pursuits
to "satiate I their | ardent curiosity" but who meddle too fiercely with science
or nature (10). Like the popular scientific imagination of nineteenth-
century England, both Walton and Victor Frankenstein become implicated
in the creation of monsters. Walton, for whom discovery is about his desire
to see "part of the world never before visited, and. . . tread a land never
before imprinted by the foot of man," begins his voyage "with the joy a child
feels when he embarks in a little boat, with his holiday mates, on an
expedition of discovery up his native river" (10). Walton's description of his
voyage exudes a child-like innocence and his adventure has a "steady
purpose," though he assures his sister, to whom he writes the letters which
frame the novel, th at he will not "rashly encounter danger." Rather,
Walton writes, he will be "cool, persevering, and prudent" (11, 17). In
contrast, Victor's voyage of discovery appears more sinister in tone.
Instead of being filled w ith wonder, Victor's discoveries take the form of
consuming knowledge; instead of voyaging up an idyllic river, Victor
pursues science in charnel houses under the cloak of darkness. Unlike
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Walton who positions himself, somewhat falsely, as a cautious observer,
Victor Frankenstein aggressively chases invention. Like a m an on a hunt,
Victor w ants to chase and capture nature. And, as with other scientific
men before him who had "performed m iracles," Frankenstein desires to
"penetrate into the recesses of nature, and shew how she works in her
hiding places" (42). The invasiveness of Frankenstein's scientific pursuits
m arks them as especially dangerous when juxtaposed with W alton's
seemingly innocent and child-like desire to "discover" nature. By
contrasting science with nature, Frankenstein with Walton, Shelley early
delineates two of Frankenstein's central tensions: the distinction between
"good" and "bad" science, between men alone in the world and the domestic
sphere they leave behind.
Shelley's self-conscious contrast between Walton and Frankenstein
m arks a distinction between scientific practices. Anne Mellor has argued
th at Shelley defined "good" science as "the detailed and reverent description
of the workings of nature," while "bad" science included the "hubristic
m anipulation of the elemental forces of nature to serve man's private end"
(89). If Walton embodies the former, he establishes this position by calling
him self a "romantic" as if to reassure his silent sister th at somehow his
quest is pure. Walton postulates this purity him self in an anti-scientific
gesture when he implies th at all he really wants to discover is a friend; he
finds this friend in Victor Frankenstein. Walton writes to his sister: "I said
in one of my letters, my dear M argaret, th a t I should find no friend on the
wide ocean; yet I have found a m an who, before his spirit had been broken
by misery, I should have been happy to have possessed as the brother of my
heart" (22). If there is a benevolent form of science in the book it is
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embodied by Walton's innocence, by his desire for companionship once he
has left the comfort of his family. It appears as if Walton's quest for
friendship erases any of the potential dangers of conquest which would
traditionally have accompanied a voyage narrative of its kind. Since Walton
is really searching for a friend, someone w ith whom he can bond w ith as a
"brother," the desire to reconstruct a "family" makes his voyage appear as
if it innocently embodies the ideally "reverent description of the workings of
nature." However, Shelley's critique of science and its relation to the family
illustrates the break-down of Mellor’s dichotomy. Walton's voyage of
discovery, his desire to delve into unknown regions, is not innocent, and
ultim ately, it is unclear w hat "good" science would look like.
Walton's letters home provide Frankenstein w ith its fram e of
domesticity and, simultaneously, point to the inability of family to contain
the spirit of the explorer. The very first gesture of the novel is toward a
family outside the text. Walton's sister, M argaret, for whom the text is
w ritten, is situated as a silent recipient of her brother's experiences. And,
as we shall see later, the further Victor moves from his family, leaving
Geneva for the scholarly and scientific world of Ingolstadt, the less power
the domestic realm holds over his worldly experiences. Victor, away from
the family, becomes so engrossed in his scholarly pursuits th at he ignores
his family, except, he claims, as a happy elsewhere available only in his
thoughts. While Walton writes letters to record his explorations, explicitly
rem inding him self of family, Victor keeps a more solitary and scientific
account of his experim ents in a journal. Victor ignores his family
altogether; scientific advancem ent cannot take place, Victor's actions
imply, if one is beholden to his domestic circle. Here Shelley establishes a
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common trope: men work in the world while women stay a t home.
Ultim ately, Shelley's novel argues th at such an arrangem ent poses more
dangers than benefits; it poses risks to society in the form of monsters. In
Frankenstein, the domestic has the potential to counter scientific monsters,
if only men would learn to live w ithin the world women have so carefully
created. Because Walton and Victor push th eir families out of the frame,
relegating them to an all but silent supporting cast, domesticity figures as a
failed prophylactic against the dangers of science. At the same time,
domesticity and family become contested ideals, illum inating a complex
relationship between science and female bodies.
C r i t i q u i n g t h e m o n s t r o u s
Before examining how the domestic functions as a prophylactic in
Frankenstein. I should like to situate my own analysis by noting how other
critics, especially feminist critics, have approached the novel. Feminist
critics of Frankenstein have most frequently focused on the novel as an
allegory about unnatural and horrifying birth— monstrous creation and
hideous progeny-claim ing th a t the novel's intent is to reify women's
positive role as biological procreators and keepers of the domestic sphere.
Such criticism suggests th a t Shelley wanted to affirm women's ability to
give birth without the meddlesome aid of medical science. Giving birth,
these critics imply, is and should rem ain a female occupation. As such, the
scientific men who populate the novel and the havoc they w reak on their
n arrative environm ents stand as examples of the dangers of man-made
intervention into the awesome mysteries of nature. Following this line of
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analysis, critics suggest th a t Shelley's novel implies th a t scientific artifice
masquerading as medical intervention enables the creation of the monster
which Victor F rankenstein produces.
In her now classic study Literary Women. Ellen Moers suggests th at
"Frankenstein is a birth myth, and one th at was lodged in the novelist's
imagination. . . by the fact th at she was herself a mother" (92). For Moers,
Shelley's own struggles with motherhood structure the novel:
Pregnant at sixteen, and almost constantly pregnant throughout
the following five years; yet not a secure mother, for she lost most of
her babies soon after they were born; and not a lawful mother, for
she was not m arried— not at least when, a t the age of eighteen,
Mary Godwin began to write Frankenstein. So are m onsters born.
(92)
Like Moers, other critics have given much credence in th eir analyses to
Mary Shelley's inability to sustain children. Much em phasis has also been
placed on the effect of the loss of her mother, Mary W ollstonecraft, who died
from complications shortly after giving birth to her daughter, and to the
lack of family to structure the Shelleys' lives.1 Marc Rubenstein's
psychoanalytic claim is th at "the horror and retribution attached to the
procreative act in the novel make plain the conflicted dimensions of [Mary
Shelley's I identification with her mother and with being a mother" (189).
Most recently, Peter Brooks has argued th at Frankenstein is about the
search for an absent m other which manifests itself in the "unveiling and
penetration" of "the m other's body in its reproductive function" (216).
^ e e , for exam ple, Sandra M. G ilbert and Susan Gubar "Horror's Twin" in The
Madwoman in the Attic: The Woman Writer and the N ineteenth-C enturv Literary
Im agination (New Haven: Yale UP, 1979): 213-47, Anne K. Mellor, Marv Shellev: Her
Life. Her Fiction. Her M onsters (New York: M ethuen, 1988), especially chapters 1-3, and
Barbara Johnson's "My M onster/M y S e lf’ (Diacritics 12,1982): 2-10.
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M ary Jacobus has argued th a t there are dangers in focusing so
specifically on a woman's life in order to read her text. In "Is There a
Woman in this Text?" Jacobus argues th a t the category of "women's
writing" is strategically and politically im portant, and yet, "to leave the
question there, with an easy recourse to the female signature or female
being, is either to beg it or to biologize it" (108). To essentialize the female
signature would require a dangerous link between women's bodies and
th eir texts which erases the complexities of literary creation and critical
interpretation. Reacting against the suggestion of Sandra Gilbert and
Susan Gubar th at Frankenstein, because of its female signature, can be
read as a parable of female experience, Jacobus argues:
To insist, for instance, th a t Frankenstein reflects Mary Shelley's
experience of the traum a of parturition and postpartum depression
may tell us about women's lives, but it reduces the text itself to a
monstrous symptom. Equally, to see it as the product of
'bibliogenesis'— a fem inist rereading of Paradise Lost that, in
exposing its misogynist politics, makes the m onster's fall an image
of woman's fall into the hell of sexuality-rew rites the novel in the
image not of books but of female experience. Fem inist
interpretations such as these have no option but to posit woman
author as origin and her life as the prim ary locus of meaning. (108)
It is true th at motherhood and reproduction are experiences th a t only
women have, and thus women can describe them differently, and possibly
more accurately, than male w riters. However, all too often the consequence
of this critical focus on motherhood, reproduction and biography has been
to neglect an analysis of other narrative complexities such as the ones I
w ant to focus on between the family and monstrosity, science and the
public's fascination with the grotesque. When we read a woman's
biography as her only text, we ignore the complexities of her fictional
narratives; a woman's biography can obscure a text even as it m ight
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illum inate one possible interpretation. While I am not trying to argue th a t
Moers, for example, would claim th at other readings of Shelley's novel are
not also valid, I do w ant to point out the biological trap of interpretation th a t
Frankenstein has spawned. While criticism th a t has focused on Shelley's
biography has been useful in understanding how im portant the Shelleys'
own domestic experience was to the w riting of Mary Shelley's novel, it has
displaced other sites for feminist intervention. The biological and
biographical criticism has kept us firmly in the realm of the family,
operating w ithin a specific set of concerns th a t highlight women's essential
link to the family. It is my contention th at once we start thinking about
women's w riting and women's bodies in a way th a t does not depend upon
reproduction we can begin to articulate different feminist, critical
agendas.2 In the case of Shelley's novel, we can begin to rethink Victor's
killing of his m onster's mate and, as we shall see, we can read the politics
of this gesture differently. In other words, because of what Jacobus calls an
"easy recourse" to the female signature, it has become much more difficult
to figure w hat we m ight call a "difficult recourse," an approach th at goes
against the grain of reading women's w riting as linked to their bodies. I
w ant to push against the essential link between production, reproduction
and the family by suggesting th at we read beyond the biography and the
birth m etaphor as the only sites for feminist intervention.
^This is not to argue that we should reject the fem inist criticism cited above. The
kind of reading M oers gave the novel was very em powering to fem inist critics who saw
gender being overlooked as an issue by an entire history of male literary criticism.
However, 1 do want to in sist that it is time to move beyond fem inist formulations that tie
women so essentially to the experience of motherhood. I argued in chapter one that this
linkage conflates wom en's creative and procreative ab ilities in a problematic way. I
believe that such a conflation lim its the kinds of readings one can perform of fem ale-
authored texts.
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One way to read against the birth m etaphor is to suggest th at Shelley
was not constructing a moral about birth, but rath er postulating its
opposite: the necessity of birth control. I w ant to move from the biography
into science by examining the myriad ways in which the failed ideal of
domesticity functions w ithin Frankenstein's plot, especially in the face of
Victor F rankenstein's pseudo-scientific gestures. F rankenstein's science
is a pseudo-scientific fascination with the unim aginable; a fascination with
w hat Robert Kieley has called "outlandish schemes which combine the
highest fancies with an elaborate application of technical ingenuity" (70).
Science is an im portant component in the makeup of Shelley's novelistic
vision; however, aside from discussions of reproductive politics, Shelley's
scientific investigations have been, for the most part, overlooked. In the
works of criticism cited above, science has been passed over for more
titillating investigations into Shelley's life. Such criticism dangerously
reduces women's w riting to the narrow history of th eir lives, removing it
from its historical and cultural contexts. However, as Kieley notes, we
should pay less attention to Shelley the author and more attention to Victor
the scientist. M aurice Hindle concurs, suggesting th a t critics should
closely examine the influence th at science had on Shelley's novel because,
"early-nineteenth-century science had much more of an im pact on the
genesis and substance of Frankenstein than is normally noticed, or even
allowed, by literary critics" (29). Hindle insists th at to overlook the
connection between Victor's experim ent and the scientific clim ate of the
early nineteenth century is "to miss entirely ju st how thrillingly speculative
and open the state of science was a t the historical moment in which Mary
Shelley was writing" (30, Hindle's emphasis). I would add th a t the
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speculative feeling of the time lends itself to a reading th at is at once about
the politics of the birth and the politics of science, illuminating the
relationship between male scientists and women.
Attem pts to read the novel's scientific implications and history have
frequently and gratuitously fallen prey to the biography and have, in the
process, erased the female body altogether. One recent example of this
phenomenon is Steven Lehm an’s "The M otherless Child in Science Fiction:
Frankenstein and M oreau." Lehm an's approach is problematic because it
replicates in an irresponsible m anner the myth of the birth myth, making
monstrous and infantalizing Mary Shelley herself. Lehman executes this
critical monstrosity by situating Shelley as the "motherless child" of his
title. He writes: "Not only did this infant [presumably Shelley] embody the
monstrosity of an untimely death, but she also represented socially
legislated 'monstrosity' by not enjoying legitim ate status." "Is it any
wonder," Lehman muses, "that a young woman adrift in the world, twice
the victim of reproductive tragedy, would be seeking a kind of 'm aternal
heartland' or would be moved to contem plate the horrifying void of its
absence?" (49). For Lehman, Frankenstein is a complicated novel about
womb envy in which Victor is only a reflection of Shelley's frustrated self.
Shelley is frustrated, Lehman suggests, because
She was forced by fate to identify with the basic procreative
frustrations of men, but she also felt the instinctive drive to become
a m other and confirm the natural monopoly of her gender. (50,
em phasis added)
It is unclear how this elusive "fate" plays its part. What is clear is th at the
m otherless author, frustrated "infant" and instinctual producer conspire to
w rite science out of Lehman's analysis leaving him only to argue th a t
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Frankenstein "depictfs] the takeover of n atu ral female function by crazed
male science" (54). This is horrifying, he suggests, in the face of modern
reproductive technology which is making gender "increasingly irrelevant"
(55). Most horrifying of all is the idea th a t too many (real) motherless
children will be born into existence. Lehm an's critique implicitly demands
th at all children should have mothers and th a t the "science" of Shelley's
creation is little more than a reactionary return to the "m aternal
heartland." After all, women m ust necessarily and continually reassert
their right to the "natural monopoly" of motherhood. Indeed, science gets
lost in psychology, while Shelley herself is figured as a postfeminist author,
sensitive to the "basic male envy of the womb" (50).
If we turn away from the author, as both Kieley and Hindle suggest,
and toward the scientist, we find a different way to approach the novel's
scientific history. As a student of science, Victor performs experim ents
more outrageous than any attem pted by his fellow students or professors at
Ingolstadt. At the same time, his experim ents have no connection to the
"real" world of science as those around him experience it at the University.
It is precisely w hat Hindle calls the "speculative" state of science th at
perm its Victor's inquiry, ju st as the speculative knowledge about the inner
workings of female bodies aided Mary Toft in her public deception. Because
Shelley creates a world in which the speculative seems to be merging with
what could be scientifically proven and illustrated through dissection and
experim entation, Victor's pursuit of knowledge has a seductive and
romantic force. As readers, we are draw n into Victor's adventure and
seduced by his characterization of discovery. Victor muses: "In other
studies you go as far as others have gone before you, and there is nothing
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more to know; but in a scientific pursuit there is continual food for
discovery and wonder" (46). Victor is seduced by science; his peculiar
combination of natural philosophy and chem istry is like the allure of a
lover. Shelley describes his "ardour" as "astonishing"; during his first two
years at school, she writes, Victor was "engaged heart and soul in the
pursuit of some discoveries" (45). "None but those who have experienced
them," Victor claims, "can conceive of the enticem ents of science" (45-46).
However, there is something less than purely scientific at work in Victor’ s
"ardour." Kieley observes, "Though Frankenstein him self scorns the
notion, his 'scientific' method has a large dose of hocus-pocus in it and
comes a good deal closer to alchemy than it does to physiology" (70).
Victor's science, Kieley argues, has more to do with magic, than w ith
science. Because Victor's experim ent is scientific and not scientific a t the
same time, his creation cannot be anything but horrific. His m onster
becomes an illustration of pseudo-science gone awry; a creation both
repulsive and fascinating at the same tim e.3 In other words, Victor's
experim ent mixes with an already circulating fascination w ith and
suspicion of medicine and science, turning novel readers into accomplices.
3In his article "Vital m atters: Mary S h elley's Frankenstein and Romantic
science," M aurice Hindle suggests that one way critics have "dismissed" the novel's
science is by calling it "hocus pocus." In particular, Hindle cites Jam es Rieger:
"Frankenstein's chem istry is switched-on magic, souped-up alchem y, the electrification
of Agrippa and Paraclesus" (30). Hindle writes: "fRiegerl goes on to claim that because
Mary Shelley 'skips the science’ in her account of the creature's anim ation, the novel
cannot even be considered science fiction'' (30, H indle's em phasis). I find Kieley's
argument about Victor's scientific hocus pocus more persuasive than Hindle's because
Victor's experim ent--the reanimation of a human being-requires that readers make a
narrative leap of faith. Victor's experim ent plays with scientific possibility; at the same
time Shelley asks her readers to believe the im possible. In order to place Frankenstein
within the tradition of the freak show--a mixture o f hocus pocus, illusion and belief--it is
essential th at we read Victor's experim ent as part "real" and part "speculative." Indeed,
this merging of the possible with the im possible is precisely how readers become im plicated
in the actual production of Victor's creature.
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Novel readers and consumers are all implicated in the production of
Victor's monster. I will retu rn to the relationship between consumption
and production in the discussion of freak shows th a t follows.
This brief history of Frankenstein criticism dem onstrates th at
Shelley's is a malleable text. M arilyn Butler has argued th a t critics of
Shelley's novel have been able to mold it into numerous forms because it is
"famously reinterpretable." She writes: "It can be a late version of the
Faust myth, or an early version of the modern myth of the mad scientist;
the Id on the rampage, the proletariat running amok, or w hat happens
when a man tries to have a baby without a woman" (12).4 Butler's list of
possibilities encapsulates most of the modern interpretations of the novel,
but, she writes, the most commonly held interpretation post-1823 was a
lesson about the power of God which invokes the very name of
"Frankenstein" to teach a lesson: "don't usurp God's prerogative in the
Creation-game, or don't get too clever with technology" (12). Reading
Frankenstein back into its 1818 context, Butler argues th at such
interpretations and warnings would not necessarily have been on the
minds of contemporary readers because the novel appeared at a time in
which scientific, not religious, discourse was circulating widely in
4Harold Bloom's collection entitled Marv Shellev (New York: C helsae House
Publishers, 1985) illustrates the gam ut of Frankenstein criticism . The collection includes
essays that critique science and technology, that explore the ideal of Romantic mythology
and Realism, and that place Shelley into a fem inist tradition of literature. Essays of note
include Gilbert and Gubar's "Horrors Twin: Mary Shelley's M onstrous Eve," George
L evine’s "Frankenstein and the T radition o f Realism," and Paul Sherw in's
Frankenstein: Creation as Catastrophe." In his "Editor's Note," Bloom writes: "The
critics reprinted here tend to concur in seein g Frankenstein both as a Promethean fiction,
linked to the High Romanticism of Byron and of Shelley, and as a precursor of much
modern and contemporary science fiction and films." Bloom firm ly situ a tes Shelley in a
romantic tradition, a tradition based on "the Romantic mythology of the self." Bloom
begins his "Introduction" with Shelley’s biography: her parents and her husband. He then
suggests that "Had she written nothing, Mary Shelley would be rem em bered today" (1).
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England. Frankenstein was "topical," Butler suggests, because of the
novel's "allusions to contemporary science— not science as formally taught,
but current scientific activity as represented to the British public in the
1810s by lectures, newspapers, a few accessible books, [andl above all the
serious Reviews" (12). Surveying some of the scientific w riting of the 1810s,
most specifically the vitalist debate as represented by William Lawrence
(the Shelleys' physician), Butler sees Shelley's novel as "directly
implicated" in early nineteenth-century scientific controversies (12).
In the rem ainder of this chapter I would like to focus on w hat
Butler, Kieley and Hindle refer to as Frankenstein's scientific implications
and the impact of such implications in the domestic sphere. Shelley does
create a birth myth, but it is one which calls for regulation instead of
production. Hence, her intervention into the world of scientific
investigation has much to do w ith the debates sketched in chapter one over
who had access to knowledge about birth. I want to suggest th at
Frankenstein is more specifically about birth control and the public's fear of
science than about literal birth precisely because it holds reproduction at
bay. In addition, I want to suggest th at Shelley's novel pays close attention
to how scientific myths and discoveries were received by nineteenth-century
culture. It is clear th at the two themes of analysis— birth and the freakish-
cannot be easily separated. Frankenstein has infected the popular
im agination— a disease and fascination th at continues to this day— while in
its nineteenth-century context, Frankenstein engaged with the freakish as
p art of its popularity. In so doing, Shelley brought together representations
of the intellectual and the domestic— novel readers and the non-reading
public. This meeting of minds took place at the freak show,
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which, as a representative of the nineteenth-century scientific imagination,
illustrates the dissem ination of popular science into the domestic sphere.
At the heart of Shelley's novel is an analysis of such dissem inations and the
constant attem pt of the domestic to protect itself from the encroachment of
science. In Frankenstein, the domestic is a prophylactic th a t protects
against science, albeit one th at fails. At the same time, the failures of
science are represented as contingent upon "domestic" consumption.
M a n u f a c t u r i n g F r e a k s
Frankenstein is an enthralling novel because Shelley invites us to
take p art in Victor's "hocus-pocus." As readers, we become voyeurs,
fascinated with the horror and possibility of Victor's experim ents. 5 During
the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, one could view the "failures"
of scientific and medical experim ents at freak shows. Such shows invited
curious onlookers to gaze upon wondrous objects, such as strange fruits or
deformed anim als, then unknown to the public world. French medical
historian Paul-Gabriel Bouce has observed th a t viewing the monstrous has
a long history: "Man is both repelled and fascinated by the spectacle of the
m onstrous, for m onsters throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth
5See M arilyn May's "Publish and Perish: W illiam Godwin, Mary S h elley, and
the Public Appetite for Scandal" (Papers on Language and Literature 26(4) 1990: 489-512)
for an analysis of the late-eighteenth- and early-nineteenth-century reading audience
and its desire for public scandal. May argues that writers were at the mercy of a
"consumer literary culture dom inated by female appetites" (494). Consequently, May
suggests that both Godwin and Shelley were writing for a public who wanted to read gossip,
"a consum ing public that exhibited all the unpredictability of fem inine desire" (490).
D espite her problematic characterization o f "feminine desire," May's article provides
useful insight into how Shelley m ight have conceived the creation o f her novel as a
m arketable commodity. Key to May's analysis is her suggestion that the reading public
had a "voracious appetite for gossip and scandal" (497). The sam e public appetite is
exhibited in the consumption of freak shows.
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centuries, and well into the tw entieth, were actually exhibited to the public
gaze in freak-shows" (95). Such shows represented the coming together of
science and the domestic— the intellectual and the popular-m uch in the
same way th at novels played to the public. While the consumption of novels
was for many years a middle-class pleasure, freak-shows were constructed
for m ass consumption across socio-economic classes. The mass
consumption of monsters at English fairs along w ith the climate of
superstition which surrounded medical innovation helped to carve out a
space for the creation of Shelley's Frankenstein. In particular, the freak-
show tradition of which Bouce w rites enabled numerous visual
confirmations of scientific horrors.
The English freak-show tradition has its most famous roots in
Bartholomew Fair, which began in the Middle Ages and continued well
into the nineteenth century. Held in a London suburb, the fair was
conceived of as a place for commerce. Almost immediately, however, the
fair became a place of revelry, entertainm ent and drunkenness. By the
late-seventeenth century, Bartholomew Fair had become more concerned
with the business of entertainm ent than the business of commerce.6 As
one 1685 observer noted, "The main importance of the fair is not so much
for merchandise and the supplying of w hat people really want: but as a sort
of Bacchanalia to gratify the m ultitude in their wandering and irregular
G For an overview of the regulation and construction o f Bartholomew Fair see
Richard D. Altick's The Shows of London (Cambridge. MA: Harvard UP, 1978),
especially chapters I-III. See also Thomas Frost's Circus Life and Circus Celebrities (1875.
Detroit: Singing Tree Press, 1970) and The Old Showmen and the Old London Fairs (1881.
Ann Arbor, MI: Gryphon Books, 1971) and Ruth M anning-Sanders's The English Circus
(London: Northumberland Press, 1952). In The Curious History of B arth olom ew F air
(London: Bucknell UP, 1985) Frances Teague provides some history of the Fair in her
analysis of the cultural and political context of Ben Jonson's play Bartholomew Fair.
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thoughts."7 Bartholomew F air was famous for staging grand theatrical
events. At fair time, the London theaters closed their doors so th a t their
principal players could perform in the streets. However, by century's end
hum an oddities and freak shows had replaced these perform ances. In “ The
Old Showmen and the Old London F airs. Thomas Frost reports th a t by 1751
"Giants and dwarfs, and learned pigs and perform ing ponies had now the
fair to themselves." The principal show of hum an oddities th a t year
included "two dwarfs, a rem arkable negro, a female one-horned
rhinoceros, and a crocodile, said to have been the first ever seen alive in this
country" (167).
When the entertainm ent of the fairs turned to oddities— hum ans and
anim als merely being displayed on platform s— perform ers no longer had to
entertain. E ntertainers, those being displayed as hum anly grotesque, had
merely to stand on stage in order to be gazed upon. No longer performers
with acts, the "rem arkable negro," for example, was displayed as freakish
merely because of the color of his/her skin. By this gesture, agency was
shifted from the performer trying to attract the gaze, for example through
sword swallowing, to the showmen who displayed the oddities they had
accumulated in their travels or business dealings.8 In addition, the
7C ited in Duncan D allas’s The Travelling People (London: M acM illan, 1971), 5.
^The most famous example of this is the Elephant Man who was "discovered" by
Tom Norman and displayed in a London store front. John Merrick w as torm ented and
treated like an anim al-displayed for the pleasure and disgust of the paying public. In The
True History of the Elephant Man (London: Allison and Busby, 1980), M ichael Howell and
Peter Ford paint a gruesome picture of how Merrick was displayed in London. Norman
rented out a storefront (which supposedly had been a greengrocer's shop)and hung a
canvas banner out front displaying a crude drawing of the "freak" inside. Howell and
Ford construct a dramatic scene from w itness accounts. Upon entering the store, a visitor
could pick out nothing at first; it w as cold, damp and sm elled. However, when Norman
pulled back the canvas which divided the room, visitors could see Merrick hunched on a
stool w ith blankets covering him. Norman would "call out sharp instruction" and
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enthralled spectators became implicated in the production of monsters,
willing participants in the construction of hum ans as visually consumable
objects. The paying viewers— the mingled masses a t the fairs— became
consumers twice over: first, of the m aterial and durable goods of the fairs
and second, of the very m onsters their desirous im aginations helped to
create.9
In The Politics and Poetics of Transgression. Peter Stallybrass and
Allon White have deftly shown how fairs during the Middle Ages were
permissive places which encouraged revelry in order, after the tim e of the
fair, to return social order to its statu s quo. Transgressions during the fair,
the mixing of high and low culture, or w hat Duncan's observer calls
"Bacchanalia," created a symbolic association between ru ral laborers and
those from the landed class. Therefore, the spectacle of the grotesque (the
human creatures on display) would act, for the duration of the fair, as
Altick's "great leveler." As Stallybrass and White observe,
the fair reflected for the bourgeoisie its own uneasy oscillation
between high and low, business and pleasure, and consequently
retained a potent im aginative charge in the culture of those who
increasingly defined themselves as above its gaudy pleasures. (31)
Bartholomew Fair, in particular, began to reflect the popular taste for the
horrible and fascinating. The fair was "radically hybrid," a "juxtaposition
Merrick would reluctantly rise and let the blanket slip (15-17). In chapter one, Howell and
Ford provide a brief overview of England's freak show tradition.
9In The Travelling People. D allas Duncan begins his discussion of freak shows
and circuses with a late-nineteenth century exam ple o f a man who dressed as a female
giant to make his living in freak show s. Duncan contends that by the late-nineteenth and
early tw entieth-centuries freak show s had become places of illusion, not displaying real
freaks, but ones that had been constructed. This is different from the origins o f freak
shows, but bears mentioning because later freaks began making money on their real or
constructed freakishness. Those displayed in shows from the seventeenth- to the early
nineteenth-century were generally considered the property of their owners.
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of the domestic and bizarre, the local and the exotic" ( S&W, 39). Unable
fully to celebrate Bakhtin’ s unbridled "carnivalesque" which posited the
fairs as places of total abandon, unsanctioned by social order, Stallybrass
and White suggest, following Terry Eagleton, th at the "juxtaposition of
domestic and bizarre" m ight have represented a "licensed release" which
served the interests of "the very official culture which it apparently
oppose!dl" (13). In other words, during the carnival, there was more a t
stake th an Bakhtinian abandon w here the high and low were m om entarily
inverted or challenged. At stake was the continual reification of social
order where the high controlled or attem pted to suppress the moments of
abandon represented by the space of the fair.
Moving beyond Eagleton's form ulation of a "licensed release," .
Stallybrass and White insist th at low and high culture depend upon one
another to code and understand th eir relations. The fair, for example,
becomes one more place in which low needs high, and vice versa, for the
transgression and recoding of social structures (19). Within this space of
transgression and reinscription, the grotesque body plays a very im portant
role:
the grotesque body may become a prim ary, highly charged
intersection and mediation of social and political forces, a sort of
intensifier and displacer in the making of identity (25)
The mingling of the masses with the bourgeoisie a t fairs would bring the
low to the high in such a way as to challenge the gaudy pleasures of both.
The grotesque pleasures experienced by all classes (at the expense of each
other) could possibly renegotiate social boundaries. To complicate even
further the mass body present at the fair, a body which is made up of a
m ixture of high and low, the fair displays the literally grotesque body-the
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dwarf, the fat woman, the giant, the Siamese twins or the bearded,
pregnant woman— in order to entertain, reify and challenge. Being gazed
upon by all who are not physically Othered as medical, scientific or
"natural" oddities, the monsters on display a t fairs become the literal
personification of the grotesque. Freak shows, as a theater of the grotesque,
became a way for the British public to negotiate its relationship to medicine
and science a t a time of great discovery and uncertainty.
By separating itself from the O therness of monsters, the freak-show
audience implicitly tried to separate itself from the horrors of science.
However, such a separation was impossible because the theatrics of the
fairs involved participants in a complicated system of pseudo-scientific
looking, a system th at implicated all viewers in the creation of m onsters.1 0
The fairs brought together the popular and the intellectual; the hum an
freak show was a representation of this union. Peter Brooks is right to
suggest a connection between F rankenstein's m onster and the economy of
looking because, as he writes, "a m onster. . . exists to be looked at, shown
off, viewed as in a circus side show" (199). This system of looking, the
complexities of which are delineated by the freak show, helps to
contextualize Frankenstein by situating the novel within a nineteenth-
century discourse of monstrosity. The grotesque bodies displayed a t freak
shows point to the dialectical relationship between science and monstrosity.
On the one hand, scientists claimed num erous innovations th a t made it
10(n Freak Show: Presenting Human O ddities for Am usem ent and Profit
(Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1985), Robert Bogdan writes: "'Freak' is not a quality that
belongs to the person on display. It is something that we created: a perspective, a set of
practices-a social construction" (xi). Indeed, by arguing that all gazers at a freak show
are im plicated in the creation of m onsters, I am in agreem ent w ith Bogdan's notion of
social construction. For a more detailed discussion of how this construction is
m anufactured see Bogdan's first chapter.
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easier to explain the interior strangeness of hum an bodies. On the other,
these same innovations created too many possibilities. The scientist could
create horrors of his im agination in a m anner not dissim ilar to the
superstitious belief, discussed in chapter four, th at a mother could create
m onsters from hers. The pregnant woman and the scientist m eet along a
continuum of horror. In both cases, the results were displayed to the curios
public; the Midwife m anuals th at reproduced images of m isshapen, hairy
or malformed children functioned as printed freak shows. However, if as
James Blondel observed in his 1727 The Power of the Mother's Im agination
over the Foetus Examin'd (1727) th at women can and "do breed Monsters by
the W antonness of their Im agination," Shelley's novels suggests th a t male
scientists create much more dangerous m onsters (2). Like Victor, they
construct literal representations of their imagined pursuits.
By the beginning of the nineteenth century the doctrine of the female
imagination was in retreat, but the freak show remained to display hum an
oddities created by blundering male scientists.1 1 With each advance in
science or medicine, the public, hungry for curios, consumed the visually
disturbing offerings of medical innovation. They consumed such curios
with the same zeal they exhibited in reading Frankenstein. Science was
1]At the beginning of the nineteenth century, scientists, such as Erasmus Darwin,
were beginning to suggest that both the male and fem ale seed should be held accountable for
the well-being of a child. Later in the century, the idea emerged of a fully formed
homunculus, produced whole and human from the m ale, was responsible for any marks on
a child. The doctrine of the female im agination w as shifting to one in which the male
im agination was responsible for determ ining the health of a child. It is my contention that
the idea of male im agination did not hold the sam e dangerous connotations which a belief
in fem ale im agination evoked. For a discussion o f th is scientific shift see Anne K.
M ellor's Marv Shelley: Her Life. Her Fictions. Her M onsters (New York: Methuen, 1988),
especially chapter 5, "A Fem inist Critique of Science." See also chapter 10, "Frankenstein
and the art of Science," in Fred Botting's M aking M onstrous (M anchester: M anchester
UP, 1991) and Mary A. Favret's "A Woman W rites the Fiction of Science: The Body in
Frankenstein” (Genders 14, Fall 1992): 50-65.
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2 24
invading the home. Consequently, the home had to find ways to shield itself
from science. As my reading of Frankenstein will suggest, because women
were relegated to the private sphere, they had to find ways to negotiate the
dangers of man-made monsters in order to preserve their own bodies.
DOM ESTICATING MONSTERS
When Victor Frankenstein begins narratin g his story to Walton he
begins with his family, more specifically with his father. For Victor,
paternity is his defining characteristic; his "family is one of the most
distinguished" of Geneva and his father "was respected by all who knew
him for his integrity and indefatigable attention to public business" (27).
Part of his father's good citizenship included "bestowing on the state sons
who might carry his virtues and his name down to posterity" (27). Setting
his story against the backdrop of paternity, it is evident from the very
beginning of his tale th at Victor would not live up to his father's name. If
he could have, he would not be running like a wild man over the ice-cold
Arctic landscape. As the "destined successor to all his |fath er's| labours
and utility," Victor was poised to inherit his father's money and status as a
respected Genevese citizen (29). In addition, he was to inherit as his wife
Elizabeth, the child adopted by the Frankenstein family and raised as
Victor's sister. To tighten and strengthen th eir family circle— a circle
which begins with the father and passes to the son-Elizabeth had been
groomed for Victor. And, as Victor observes, "a desire to bind as closely as
possible the ties of a domestic love determined my mother to consider
Elizabeth as my future wife" (29). The paternal line provides wealth and
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status, the m aternal m anufactures a family. However, instead of
reconciling him self to domestic scenes, Victor discovers science.
The OED provides five definitions for domestic when used as a
adjective:
1. Having the character or position of an intim ate of the house;
housed.
2. Of or belonging to the home, house, or household; pertaining to
one's place of residence or fam ily affairs; household, home,
"family."
3. Of or pertaining to one's own country or nation; not foreign,
internal, inland, "home."
4. Of anim als: Living under the care of man, in or near his
habitations; tame, not wild.
5. Attached to home; devoted to home life or duties; domesticated.
"Domesticated" is defined as "made domestic or fam iliar; tamed,
naturalized." For Victor, who repeatedly refers to his "domestic circle"
throughout his narrative, "domestic" generally m eans belonging to the
home. However, when he speaks of Elizabeth he speaks of one
domesticated, as in definitions four and five. She is both woman in the
home, symbol of a pure, feminine dom esticity and a tame animal. Indeed,
Victor suggests th at Elizabeth is the perfect anim al. She is described as
"docile and good tempered, yet gay and playful as a summer insect" (29).
"No one could better enjoy liberty," Victor remembers, "yet no one could
submit w ith more grace than she did to constraint and caprice. . . . she
appeared the most fragile creature in the world." Victor concludes, "I
loved to tend on her, as I should on a favourite animal" (30). Elizabeth, to
whom the world "was a vacancy which she sought to people with
im aginations of her own," personifies the happy years of Victor's
childhood.
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Victor's domestic life and the domesticated position he creates for
Elizabeth are narratively established as the novel's prim al scenes. Coming
directly on the heels of Walton's family frame, Victor's construction of
paternity and m aternal concern delineate a protected space. The domestic—
the intim ate and loving fam ily-functions, at the very least, as an idyllic
memory. At most, it is m eant to function as a protective enclave— an
enclave which includes Victor's parents, Elizabeth, his two brothers Ernest
and William, and his friend Clerval. This family circle is narratively
established as a space unsullied by dangerous knowledge. Summing up
his life before his first encounters with scientific dangers, Victor narrates:
Such was our domestic circle, from which care and pain seemed
for ever banished. My father directed our studies, and my mother
partook of our enjoyments. Neither of us possessed the slightest
pre-eminence over the other; the voice of command was never
heard am ongst us; but m utual affection engaged us all to comply
with and obey the slightest desire of each other. (37)
Victor's egalitarian fam ily— a family which could have been constructed
from the pages of Mary W ollstonecraft's A Vindication of the Rights of
Woman— embodies a benevolent force. While Victor's family is divided
along traditional gender lines (the father directs education while the
mother looks on) an underlying desire not to disrupt the domestic scene
would seem to be the common goal which keeps the Frankenstein family
together. The family members exist in harmony and at peace. Later in
Victor's narrative, when he harkens back to his family, it is this ideal that
he is seeking as his possible protection. It is this ideal family th at Victor is
constantly trying to reconstruct in his im agination, an ideal th at can no
longer exist because it has been dismantled slowly and methodically by his
m onstrous creation.
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When Victor first turns to science, he relates it to Elizabeth as a
"secret." Victor's narrative, of course, is a recreation already informed by
the horrid effects of his scientific pursuits; therefore, he can read more
carefully the threats posed to his family by his desires to discover the secrets
of the world. In hindsight, Victor positions science as a fearful and
awesome agent— a force th a t could poison his home. The fateful mistake
appears to be th at Elizabeth both kept and ignored Victor's secret: "She did
not interest herself in the subject" (34). By not interesting herself in
Victor's male studies, and by guarding his secret, Elizabeth could be said to
have enabled the trajectory of the narrative. Keeping science secret,
interesting herself in the domestic cares for which she .has been educated,
Elizabeth writes herself out of the public world of exploration and firmly
into the family scene. In Victor's narrative, she occupies the place of
Walton's silent sister. Indeed, her domestic and strangely silent position is
solidified when, upon her death bed, Victor's m other joins her children's
hands in union and firmly writes Elizabeth's destiny as "mother:"
"My children," she said, "my firm est hopes of future happiness
were placed on the prospect of your union. This expectation will
now be the consolation of your father. Elizabeth, my love, you m ust
supply my place to your younger cousins. Alas! I regret th at I am
taken from you; and, happy and beloved as I have been, is it not
hard to be taken from you all?" (38)
The consolation to Victor's mother is th a t she has raised and trained her
successor. Because Elizabeth was hand-picked to take the place of
"mother," it appears th a t the family will stay intact. Victor's m other's
death is the first real threat to the ideal family, but her final, domestic
gesture is m eant to ensure th at this th reat is neutralized. Victor's
mother's death and the ascendancy of his "sister" to a m othering role
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exposes the first hole in the family which functions as a prophylactic
against science. Though Victor rem em bers th a t "I never beheld [Elizabeth]
so enchanting as at this time, when she was continually endeavouring to
contribute to the happiness of others, entirely forgetful of herself," a sister,
destined for an incestuous m arriage, cannot protect like a mother (39).
Victor's entree into the world outside his family can take place only
after his m other is dead. Like a heroine whose education can proceed only
when she is parentless, Victor's real, scientific education can finally begin
when he separates him self from his fam ily.1 2 His mother's death enables
his secret passion for science to be made public. Victor sets off for school
with inadequate tools-a broken family and outdated knowledge. The two
are inextricably bound for he "discovered" this useless knowledge at home.
He quickly learns th at the dead scientists he has been reading have
provided him with faulty knowledge; Victor is required to abandon Agrippa
and M agnus, whose "wild fancies" he had studied, to "exchange chim eras
of boundless grandeur for realities of little worth" (41). M. Waldman,
whom Victor hears lecture, finally sets him off on more modern pursuits;
Victor is soon enthralled by the power of modern science to m anipulate
1 !? A heroine’s plot, especially when its goal is the heroine's education, m ust occur
without mothers. This, of course, is because it is assum ed that a mother would have always
known the right advice for her daughter. Therefore, if a mother was present, there would be
no plot, no romance and certainly no adventure. This is true of Charlotte Lennox’s The
Female Quixote (1752. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1989). Arabella can only set out on her
adventure because there is no mother to warn her that a woman's life is not as it appears in
romance novels. Other exam ples of m otherless plots include Frances Burney's Evelina
(1778. New York: W.W Norton & Co., 1965) and M aria Edgeworth's Belinda (1801.
London: Pandora, 1986). Sir Walter Scott plays with the motherless heroine trope in
Waverlev (1814. London: Penguin Books, 1972), putting a hero in the heroine’s place. An
analysis of the motherless hero plot lies beyond the scope of this essay; however, in arguing
that Victor's plot can only take place after his mother's death, I would like to suggest that
Frankenstein is a novel of education not dissim ilar to the novels listed above.
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nature. He is engrossed with Waldman's description of scientific powers
and recalls the first lecture in detail:
"The ancient teachers of this science," said he, "promised
im possibilities, and performed nothing. The modern m asters
promise very little; they know th at m etals cannot be transm uted,
and th a t the elixir of life is a chimera. But these philosophers,
whose hands seem only made to dabble in dirt, and their eyes to
pour over microscope and crucible, have indeed performed
miracles. They penetrate into the recesses of nature, and shew how
she works in her hiding places. They ascend into the heavens; they
have discovered how the blood circulates, and the nature of the air
we breathe. They have acquired new and almost unlimited powers;
they can command the thunders of heaven, mimic earthquakes,
and even mock the invisible world w ith its own shadows." (42)
Waldman's science promises possibility. He advises Victor to become
"really a man of science" by applying him self to all of n atural philosophy
and leaving his old and chimerical notions behind. In other words, he
advises Victor to finally leave his protected, domestic ideals and to move
firmly into the world of progressive science. If his old knowledge is part of
his family, he m ust leave his family behind.
This is exactly what Victor does; he divorces him self from his
previous learning, learning firmly associated with his family. Yet, at the
same moment Victor breaks from his family he moves to construct a new
one— to reconstruct, through science, an ideal he left behind. Victor
discovers the origins of life and, "after so much time spent in painful
labor," he has a revelation:
a sudden light broke in upon me— a light so brilliant and wondrous,
yet so simple, that while I became dizzy with the immensity of the
prospect which it illustrated, I was surprised th a t among so many
men of genius, who had directed th eir inquiries towards the same
science, th a t I alone should be reserved to discover so astonishing a
secret. (47)
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Victor's discovery takes place under the same guise of secrecy w ith which
he began his p u rsu it of science. Such secrecy excludes the family because
it necessarily hides the very dangers which will threaten its existence.
With knowledge, Victor asserts, comes danger; separation from family
enables this danger and discovery. Being away from one's family is always
a risk. "How much happier," Victor muses, "that man is who believes his
native town to be the world, than he who aspires to become greater than his
nature will allow" (48). In order to keep such danger at bay, Victor puts his
discoveries to the task of reconstructing a family. With his ability to create
life, Victor desires completeness:
A new species would bless me as its creator and source; many
happy and excellent natures would owe their being to me. No
father could claim the gratitude o f his child so completely as I
should deserve theirs. (49, em phasis added)
Though god-like, Victor's vision recreates the seemingly idyllic scenes of
his own family experiences. He w ants to reconstruct patrilineage, to create
for him self a shield of domesticity. In other words, Victor is in desperate
need of a prophylactic. He wants a complete family, one th at could offer
him protection both from his desire to create and from the scientific
knowledge which enabled his discoveries.
The problem is that to make a complete family one m ust have all of
the "natural" components— including a m other. Since the women are all at
home, there is no hope th at Victor will receive the idealized gratitude he
envisions. He gets only danger, a danger, he later realizes, brought about
by the loss of his home. In a moralizing moment, Victor lam ents to Walton
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the loss of his domestic tranquility:
A hum an being in perfection ought always to preserve a calm and
peaceful mind, and never to allow passion or a transitory desire to
disturb his tranquility. I do not think th a t the pursuit of knowledge
is an exception to this rule. If the study to which you apply yourself
has a tendency to weaken your affections, and to destroy your taste
for those simple pleasures in which no alloy can possibly mix, then
th at study is certainly unlawful, th at is to say, not befitting the
hum an mind. If this rule were always observed; if no m an allowed
any pursuit whatsoever to interfere with the tranquility of his
domestic affection, Greece had not been enslaved; Caesar would
have spared his country; America would have been discovered
more gradually; and the empires of Mexico and Peru had not been
destroyed. (51)
It would seem th a t Victor wanted to recreate a tranquil domesticity;
however, "the beauty of the dream vanished and, breathless horror and
disgust filled I his I heart" (53). When he sees his creation, it is ghastly and
he can neither act as its mother nor its father. He feels only disgust and
cannot fulfill his desire to recreate domesticity. Victor clearly thought he
could pursue nature and discover her secrets, but he did not understand
women. In uncovering nature's secrets, he literally destroys all of the
novel's female characters. This is not the same as suggesting th a t Victor
removes the need for mothers, assum ing a god-like position of creator for
himself. R ather, arguing th a t Victor silences and m urders the women
around him nuances his moral imperative. One can still give birth w ithout
women, he discovers, but one cannot recreate "home." Because home is
clearly a woman's space, Victor might be able to understand and expose
nature, but the complexities of how domestic space is constructed are
elusive. Victor may be able to give birth, but he is unable to nurture, and
hindsight suggests th at he should have stayed at home. At the very least,
he should have paid more attention while he was there.
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In her reading of Victor's m oralizing speech, Anne Mellor has
argued that, "Mary Shelley clearly perceived the inherent danger in a
Promethean, revolutionary ideology: commitment to an abstract good can
justify an emotional detachm ent from present hum an relationships and
family obligations, a willingness to sacrifice the living to a cause whose
final consequences cannot be fully controlled" (86). Mellor insists th at
Victor's anguish and horror at his powers to create, and his passion for
science "is a displacem ent of norm al emotions and healthy hum an
relationships" (107). In her analysis, she reduces Victor's experim ents to
little more than egotistic pursuits: "Both W aldman and Frankenstein
devote their emotional energy not to empathic feelings or domestic
affections but to egoistic dreams of conquering the boundaries of nature or
of death" (110). Emphasizing Victor's ego, Mellor erases the complexities of
Victor's emotions and desires. It would seem th at Victor's need to father
sons, even if through science, is evidence of such complexities and
conflicts. The repulsion Victor expresses throughout his experim ent, the
fatigue he experiences, his illness and collapse are w ritten out of Mellor’s
analysis. Mellor's claim of egotism has no room for a fatigued and
repulsed god. Nor is there a recognition of the possibility that in creating
his monster, Victor was desperately trying to recreate his family— to
recreate "scenes of home so dear to |h is| recollection" (55). Such scenes, he
imagines, might function as protection from his own w andering
im agination. They might, in fact, act as prophylactics, preserving him
from his own horrible m onster.
The aggressive destruction of Victor's family begins only when he
rejects his creation. Victor's failed reconstruction of a family scene signals
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its literal end. With his friend Clerval's arrival in Ingolstadt, Victor is
visited for the first tim e by a representative of his family. In addition, with
Clerval's arrival and attendance at Victor's sick bed, we hear Elizabeth's
voice for the first time. She speaks in a letter carried into the very rooms
where Victor's creation and horror has been enacted. Here, the domestic
meets the scientific. Elizabeth's concern is wholly for Victor's health, and
her letter employs balms of domesticity as cure. The letter relates plots of
family romance: which profession Ernest should choose to best support a
family, news of W illiam’s girlfriends whom he calls "wives," and the town
gossip about who has been married to whom. These domestic and familial
details illustrate how easily Elizabeth has assum ed the position of Victor's
mother. Rem em bering Mrs. Frankenstein's last domestic gesture, we see
a repetition of such gestures in the stories Elizabeth relates. Most
specifically, such repetition and the promise of continued domesticity is
present in the story Elizabeth tells of Justine Moritz. Justine, having
entered the Frankenstein family in much the same m anner as Elizabeth,
has now assum ed Elizabeth's old place. In Victor's absence, Justine has
become p art of the family, a "sister" of sorts. As a result, she is, as with the
rest of the family, a target for revenge.
The sight of Clerval attending to Victor's bedside while the latter
reads Elizabeth's letter is Victor's last happy family scene. Soon after, his
creation begins dism antling the Frankenstein family. William is
murdered, and Justine is declared guilty of his death; Clerval falls to the
creature's w rath in punishm ent for Victor's actions, and finally, Elizabeth
is strangled on her wedding night. However, before these crimes, while the
m anufactured hum an is out of Victor's sight, it m om entarily appears as if
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Victor will be able to return to his ideal of domestic tranquility. It is Clerval
who offers this promise; he represents the mate, the link to family ties, th at
Victor has been seeking. And, as a consequence, Clerval's death has the
strongest impact on Victor. Much attention has been paid to Victor's lack
of desire for his "sister" Elizabeth, and of the brotherly affections which
would seem to preclude rom antic and physical desire. Because Elizabeth is
an animal, tam ed and dom esticated, and because she neither can nor will
join Victor in his pursuit of science, any desire between the two appears to
have been written out of the plot. Elizabeth's domestic words might be able
to enter Victor's laboratory, but she does not appear to rouse any passions
in his heart. Her connections to the world of domesticity provide no
protection; she cannot protect her family from danger once Victor
unleashes his creation. She is unable to do so, either by m othering the
family or m arrying Victor, because her relationship to the family is
incestuous. Because she has been raised as Victor's sister and hand-
picked by his mother to be his wife, Elizabeth is seemingly unable to offer
the proper domestic protection. Her relationship to the family is semi-
monstrous, rem iniscent of the world th at the m onster him self sees through
the little hole in his hovel next to the De Lacey's home but can never have.
Frankenstein's family, constructed from incestuous desire, is not strong
enough to stave off threats from the outside.
It is Clerval to whom Victor seems attracted, and it is Clerval who
offers hope of protection. However, Victor refuses to tru st him: "although I
loved I Clerval I with a m ixture of affection and reverence th a t knew no
bounds, yet I could never persuade myself to confide in him th a t event
which was so often present to my recollection" (63). Clerval, having come to
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Ingolstadt to pursue his own education, sacrifices his intellectual
endeavors in order to nurture his friend. Victor remembers: "Clerval
called forth the better feelings of my heart; he again taught me to love the
aspect of nature, and the cheerful faces of children" (65). Indeed, Clerval
moves Victor back into domestic scenes and affections while Victor reserves
his narrative passions for descriptions of his friend. One could even argue
th a t Victor saves his sexual desires for Clerval. This might explain why
Clerval cannot offer proper, familial protection. Clerval has been
domesticated and feminized— we are told in chapter one th at "his favourite
study consists in books of chivalry and romance"— therefore he cannot fight
off science, nor is he privy to its workings.1 3
Victor's response to his creation reveals th a t he is unable to nurture;
in attem pting to recreate a family, to write his own lineage, Victor is
rendered completely ineffective. His creation cannot be folded into a
domestic ideal. And yet, to become part of a domestic scene is the
creature's most ardent desire. When Victor finally comes face-to-face with
his "daemon," and the latter tells his story, he reveals th a t all Victor's
rejection would be forgotten, th at there will be no further revenge, if only
Victor could create for him a monstrous companion. The creature tells of
wandering through the forest, of being beaten and rejected, and of
13One could perforin a very effective reading of the relationship between Clerval
and Victor using Eve Sedgwick's theories of homosocial desire. See Sedgwick's Between
Men: English Literature and Male Homosocial Desire (New York: Columbia UP, 1985),
especially Chapter Five, "Toward the Gothic: Terrorism and Hom osexual Panic."
Though Sedgwick only m entions Frankenstein briefly, the relationship betw een Clerval
and Victor and, later, Victor and his m onster, fit neatly into her theory o f triangles which
keep the social/sexual order intact.
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discovering the monstrosity and uncertainty of his own form.
And what was I? Of my creation and creator I was absolutely
ignorant; but I knew th a t I possessed no money, no friends, no kind
of property. I was, besides, endowed with a figure hideously
deformed and loathsome; I was not even of the same nature as
man. . . . Was I then a m onster, a blot upon the earth, from which
all men fled, and whom all men disowned? (115-16)
Most importantly, he relates his forays into the domestic: how he hid in a
sm all hovel attached to a cottage from which he could watch and monitor
the goings on of the De Lacey family. It is this family scene, glimpsed
through a hole, in which the creature w ants so desperately to participate.
Specifically, the creature becomes fascinated with the romance and
courtship between Felix and Safie. The need for courtship and
companionship, as well as the desire to fit into a family, convince the
creature to reveal himself to the cottagers. And, of course, they are
horrified. Even though the old, blind De Lacey is accepting, his family
recognizes monstrosity when they see it. They chase the creature from the
place he has called home.
Victor and the De Laceys each have a home and a domestic circle
which is m eant to shield them from freaks. After witnessing the family
scenes, the monster wants the same and wonders why he cannot have it:
But where were my friends and relations? No father had watched
my infant days, no m other had blessed me with smiles and
caresses; or if they had, all my past life was now a blot, a blind
vacancy in which I distinguished nothing. From my earliest
remembrance I had been as I then was in height and proportion. I
had never yet seen a being resem bling me, or who claimed any
intercourse with me. W hat was I?" (117)
The creature has no lineage, no history, and thus no connection to the
world of hum ans. However, if he had a connection, he would be able to
cease the hateful acts he performs. As his "father" and creator, Victor has
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a moral obligation to construct a mate, to m anufacture a family. The
monster accuses: "I have no sentim ent but th a t of hatred. Unfeeling,
heartless creator! you had endowed me w ith perceptions and passions, and
then cast me abroad an object for the scorn and horror of mankind" (136).
To atone, the creator/father must make a companion: "You m ust create a
female for me, with whom I can live in the interchange of those sympathies
necessary for my being. This you alone can do; and I demand it of you as a
right which you m ust not refuse" (140). Only then will Victor's monster be
able to create a peaceful future. With a female companion, a wife, all will
be "peaceful and human;" together they will construct a home. Without
her, the m onster will punish Victor for not providing him protection.
W ithout a wife and family, the creature will always remain a t the mercy of
the world.
Victor consents to his creation's desires, constructing but then
dism antling his female creation. While engaged in his second creative
process, his second birth, Victor feels no enthusiasm :
D uring my first experiment, a kind of enthusiastic frenzy had
blinded me to the horror of my employment; my mind was intently
fixed on the sequel of my labour, and my eyes were shut to the
horror of my proceedings. But now I went to it in cold blood, and
my heart often sickened at the work of my hands. (162)
He works on to appease his monster, while constantly fearing th at he will
meet the creature whom he now calls his "persecutor" (162). Victor, aware
of the effects of his scientific experimentation, having literally felt the w rath
of creation, ponders more thoroughly his responsibility in creating another
being. He has moved from ignorance to knowledge and w hat he has
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learned will not perm it him to finish building a woman.
Three years before I was engaged in the same m anner, and had
created a fiend whose unparalleled barbarity has desolated my
heart, and filled it forever with the bitterest remorse. I was now
about to form another being, of whose disposition I was alike
ignorant; she m ight become ten thousand tim es more m alignant
th an her m ate, and delight, for its own sake, in m urder and
wretchedness. He had sworn to quit the neighborhood of man, and
hide him self in deserts; but she had not; and she, who in all
probability was to become a thinking and reasoning anim al, might
refuse to comply w ith a compact made before her creation. (163)
In other words, this woman might not be properly domesticated. Instead
she m ight think on her own and hate her companion. She m ight, "turn
with disgust from him to the superior beauty of man; she m ight quit him"
(163). There would be no way to control her, to keep her in a home or to keep
her from turning to "superior" men. Jam es Davis has argued th at Victor
"invents hypothetical actions of women and then lashes out to prevent w hat
he anticipates they will do." In so doing, Victor assumes th a t "women have
a far greater capacity for evil than men, th at they can delight in crime for
its own sake, that their fickle rejection of men is a 'provocation'" (310).
Davis argues th at Victor is a misogynist, and th at his act of dismembering
the female monster is an effort "to subvert m aternal reproductive power"
(311).
It is narratively true th at Victor decides to destroy his woman
because he is afraid she will reproduce. He is horrified by the vision of the
race of fiends his monstrous couple will bring into the world. He is sure
th at "one of the first results of those sympathies for which the daemon
thirsted would be children, and a race of devils would be propagated upon
the earth, who might make the very existence of the species of man a
condition precarious and full of terror" (163). But why dism em ber the
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whole? Why didn't Shelley simply have Victor construct a woman w ithout
the ability to reproduce? Why not simply take out her ovaries? When Victor
denies his "daemon" a companion, he implies th a t only hum ans are
allowed to have families. Even though the creature assures him th at his
"family" will be far away, Victor says no. He will not create domestic
comforts— will not provide his m onster with fam ilial protection.
Colleen Hobbs has suggested th at Victor destroys his female monster
because he is "incapable of passion," especially toward women (158). Hobbs
continues: "fVictorl desires scientific discovery 'with ardor,' while his
w arm est feelings toward Elizabeth are decidedly less enthusiastic, no more
than a platonic, 'paradisiacal (dream | of love and joy'" (159). Victor is
afraid of women, Hobbs suggests, apprehensive of consumm ating his
marriage with Elizabeth (163). However, w hat if we were to insist th at
Davis, like the critics discussed earlier, is wrong about m aternal
reproductive power, and th at Hobbs is m isreading Victor's passions? W hat
if we were to move from Victor's actions to Shelley's authorial gestures? I
want to suggest th at Victor's destroying his female creature might not be a
misogynist gesture a t all. Rather, by reading against the grain of Victor's
own words I w ant to suggest th a t dism em bering the female companion
may be Shelley's most feminist and progressive narrative maneuver.
R ather than reading the dism antling of woman as a rejection of
sexuality or Victor's second god-like act, it is more provocative to suggest
th at this might be Shelley's gesture for female equality. The monster wants
desperately to construct a family which would resemble the romantic
scenes of companionship played out by the De Lacey family. He wants
someone w ith whom he can build domestic sym pathies. However, the De
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Laceys provide only one version of a family. In the Frankenstein
household, we have seen how an ideal of family can work to domesticate
and contain women. When Shelley, through Victor, destroys the female
form, she signals a liberation from house and home. The ultim ate fear and
realization of the text is not ju st th at another monster might exist, but th at
the male m onster will try to replicate a family which exactly m irrors th at of
hum ans— a family which dom esticates women, tam es them and robs them
of agency outside of the home. Hobbs acknowledges ju st such a feminist
gesture when she w rites that, "Shelley allows Elizabeth, the monster's Final
victim, to examine the hum an cost of rem aining in one's 'proper sphere'"
(165). More horrifying, however, is w hat becomes of monstrous families
once they are formed. If hum ans can dom esticate m onsters, then there is
no difference between us and them. And, if they can have families, then
the most terrifying thing is th at they will reproduce the same family
structures created by humans. How would we distinguish between their
families and our own, except by their "freakish" appearance; without
m arkers of monstrosity on their skin, there would be no apparent difference
between us and them. Finally, the tangible th reat of monstrous
reproduction is th at a female m onster might mate w ith a male hum an and,
as a result, create monsters th at look ju st like everyone else. It might then
become impossible to distinguish the freaks from the hum ans. We are
reminded th at when Walton first describes Victor to his sister he calls him
a "creature." Walton writes:
I never saw a more interesting creature: his eyes have generally
an expression of wildness, and even madness; but there are
moments when, if any one performs an act of kindness towards
him, or does him any the most trifling service, his whole
countenance is lighted up, as it were, with a beam of benevolence
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and sweetness th at I never saw equalled. But he is generally
melancholy and despairing; and sometimes he gnashes his teeth,
as if im patient of the weight of the woes th a t oppress him. (20)
From the beginning of Frankenstein. Shelley makes it clear th a t there is
only a subtle, psychological difference between w hat is hum an and w hat is
m onstrous.
Indeed, Shelley implies th a t it may not be necessary or possible to
make distinctions between the two. Elizabeth's death illustrates th at
hum an interaction is already based in a socially sanctioned form of
monstrosity. Victor, wholly absorbed by his own self-pity and horror, can
only imagine his own death and thus leaves Elizabeth unprotected. The
narrative violence, with the exception of th at brought on Clerval and
William, is all perpetrated on women. However, Clerval and William are
both left vulnerable because of their feminized, and innocent positions;
Clerval is in the dark about science and William is a child. In other words
the textual violence is carried out on all the unprotected, hence "female,"
characters who have not been allowed the proper tools of understanding.
Shelley reminds her readers th at the violence men practice in the world
always revisits the home. The explorer who goes away will bring his
violence back with him, and because women are educated to sit a t home
and wait, they are raised to be victims. Like Mary W ollstonecraft, Shelley
finally w ants to advocate different roles for women in order to enact her
mother's "revolution in female m anners." Women should not be raised,
her novel argues, as the victims of science.
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242
H o m e -m a d e p r o p h y l a c t i c s
If, as I have been arguing, "home" is constructed to act as a
prophylactic against the invasion of science, then it would follow th at the
women in the home are responsible for distributing and m aintaining birth-
control information. It is clearly the men in Frankenstein who are in need
of contraception; it is they who reproduce and worry about the burden of
reproduction. This burden of reproduction is the narrative impetus which
drives Victor to dism antle his female creation. And though I have argued
th at destroying the female monster is Shelley's feminist gesture, I want to
suggest yet another point of feminist intervention. If the home is a
prophylactic, and women m aintain the home, construct and operate w ithin
a traditionally domestic sphere, then Shelley is making an attem pt to
radicalize women's role in the family. If men go out in search of science, of
medical discovery, women, she implies stay at home privy to a completely
different medical discourse. In other words, Elizabeth's domestic balms,
for example, are constructed as birth control, or home-made prophylactics,
where home enacts a domesticated form of medicine. If there is "good"
science in the novel, it can be found at home in the unproductive female
body which posits one possibility for women's liberation or equality.
In Bodies That M atter. Judith Butler draws out the historic
connection between women and m ateriality. The m aterial of "woman" is
linked, she argues, to their ability to reproduce:
The classic association of fem ininity with m ateriality can be traced
to a set of etymologies which link m atter with m ater and m atrix (or
the womb) and, hence, with a problematic of reproduction. The
classical configuration of m atter as a site of generation and
origination becomes especially significant when the account of
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w hat an object is and means requires recourse to its originating
principle. When not associated w ith reproduction, m atter is
generalized as a principle of origination and causality. (31)
This specific link between women and origin, between women and their
wombs, m eans th at women are continually and historically reduced to
their m aterial bodies. In other words, it is a woman's ability to reproduce
which defines her. Reducing women to this specific site of fem ininity
relegates the feminine to a place where it "has no morphe, no morphology,
no contour" (49). Butler argues th at to invoke the m atter of women is to
"invoke a sedim ented history of sexual hierarchy and sexual erasures" (49).
"Woman," she contends, have historically and critically "represent!edl a
descent into m ateriality" (43). Butler cautions th at reevaluating this
m aterial should "be an object of feminist inquiry, but. . . would be quite
problematic as a ground of feminist theory" (49).
To ground feminist theory in a theory of reproduction is to
essentialize a woman's ability to reproduce as her definitive characteristic.
By reading Mary Shelley's history with pregnancy into her novel, the critics
discussed earlier situate reproduction as a woman's domain— as the most
viable m aterial available for a woman's literary creation. In claiming th at
Frankenstein is about the dangers of men having children, they w ant to
argue th at Shelley believed th at only women should be able to give birth.
Theorizing from this position reduces women to their m aterial: ovaries,
womb, uterus. Indeed, late-tw entieth century feminism has focused very
specifically on women's reproductive, hence biological rights. One result
has been a discussion of the invasiveness of medicine in which particular
attention has been paid to reproductive technologies. Living Laboratories.
the title of one recent feminist investigation into reproductive technologies,
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indicates the tone of much of this criticism. Women are being turned into
receptacles for reproductive experim entation, and, as a result, childbirth is
being taken away from women. This line of reasoning posits th at the ability
to give birth is being separated from women's bodies, from their specific
m ateriality. Critics such as Gena Corea, Janice Raymond and Valerie
Hartouni find this separation troubling. Corea, for example, writes:
Newspapers assure us th a t new reproductive technologies as
embryo transfer, in vitro fertilization and artificial insemination of
breeder women (usually known as 'surrogate mothers') are merely
'therapies' which kindly physicians provide for infertile women. Of
course, there is more to it than th at. Through the years, with
widespread use of the technologies, social institutions will be
restructured to reflect a new reality— tightened male control over
female reproductive processes. (38)
Reproductive technologies will, and should, rem ain a contested and
questioned form of science.1 4 The dangerous part of this questioning is a
desire to resituate birth as "natural." If reproductive technologies are
invasive and artificial, then there m ust have been a time when nature took
care of birth properly. In other words, to argue against science, it appears
as if one m ust posit its opposite: nature. Consequently, if it is a woman's
"nature" to reproduce, then science should not be perm itted to interfere.
Men— under the guise of science-should not be allowed to give birth.
14See Robyn Rowland's Living Laboratories (Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1992) for
a good overview of fem inist, critical approaches to reproductive technologies. See also
Gena Corea's The Mother Machine: Reproductive T echnologies from Artificial
Reproduction to Artificial Wombs (New York: Harper & Row, 1985) and her collection
Man-Made Women: How New Reproductive T echnologies Affect Women (Bloomington:
Indiana U P, 1987), especially Janice Raymond's "Preface" and Robyn Rowland's
"Motherhood, patriarchal power, alienation and the issu e o f 'choice' in sex preselection."
See also Valerie Hartouni's "Containing Women: Reproductive Discourse in the 1980s"
in Constance Penley and Andrew Ross, eds, Technoculture (Minneapolis: U of M innesota
P, 1991).
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I am uncertain th a t returning women to th eir n atural role in
childbirth is the moral of Shelley's novel. Rather, a t stake is an attem pt to
rewrite the cultural im perative which insists th a t women should always
have children and th at giving birth, or the ability to give birth, has an
intrinsic, m aterial value. Victor's refusal to create the possibility for his
m onster to reproduce in a hum an, "natural," m anner underscores the
contested value of reproduction itself. One could argue th a t Victor wants to
m aintain and control a distinction between hum an and freak; however, it is
more provocative to insist th at by destroying the female monster, Shelley, as
author, gestures towards the need for birth control. Birth control, in other
words, as damage control: a way of separating women from their creative
production and from the m ateriality of their bodies. Shelley's contraceptive
gesture, her narrative drive to protect the domestic sphere from monsters,
suggests th at there is nothing of intrinsic value in giving birth, monstrous
or otherwise.
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Chapter 6
H arriet M artineau and the Contraceptive Sponge:
Taming the M onstrous Family
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Near the end of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, after Victor begins to
construct and then dism antles his female m onster, we are reminded th at
one of the most horrific possibilities Victor's female creature offers is the
potential for human reproduction. Victor is afraid th a t the male creature
and his female companion will produce m onstrous fam ilies, and, as we
have already seen, he explicitly uses this fear as a justification for
dism antling the nearly formed female body. The m onstrous family along
with the potential horrors it could unleash on "human" society— murder,
revenge, and wrechednesss— are too great a burden for Victor to shoulder.
He cannot reassure him self th a t his female creation and the family she
might produce will not be "ten thousand times more m alignant" than what
he has already created (163). He is literally afraid of monsters. As a
preventative, Victor believes th at he holds the monstrous family at bay by
denying his male creature a female companion.
In her novel The Mill on the Floss (1860). George Eliot reminds us
th at Victor did not save novel readers from the specter of the monstrous
family. The ever-expanding Moss family, in contrast to the more
reproductively restrained Dodsons or Tullivers, represents one
configuration of m id-nineteenth-century horror. Never mind th at the
Dodsons are domineering, spiteful, rich and stingy; never mind th at Mr.
Tulliver is foolish and th a t his son Tom turns heartless and imperious
toward his sister Maggie after their father's death; it is the Moss family,
forever reproducing and unable to support itself, which is held out as the
most frightful illustration of ill m anagem ent and imprudence. G ritty
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Tulliver, the narrator explains, had been a beauty before her m arriage to
Moss, but she "had quite throw n herself away in m arriage, and had
crowned her mistakes by having an eighth baby" (77). Unlike the Tullivers
who limit themselves to two offspring, and unlike the other Dodson sisters—
Mrs. Deane, Mrs. Glegg and Mrs. P ullet— who have one or two children,
the Mosses continue to produce babies though they are the least able to
support them. Consequently, G ritty Moss is worn and weary from
childbearing and child rearing, and her husband is in debt to Mr. Tulliver,
who loaned him money for the m anagem ent of his farm.
Gritty Moss enters the novel when Mr. Tulliver rides over to the Moss
farm to collect the balance of the debt owed him. She has a "half-weary
smile on her face, and a black-eyed baby in her arms." The narrator
relates: "Mrs. Moss's face bore a faded resemblance to her brother's; baby's
little fat hand, pressed against her cheek, seemed to show more strikingly
th at the cheek was faded" (79). The scene exudes dirt; G ritty has children
peering out from around her skirts and to Mr. Tulliver, who stays on his
horse so as to command respect and to be "above the level of pleading eyes,"
children appear to be everywhere (81). Mrs. Moss is described as a "patient,
prolific, loving-hearted woman" who, "did not take her stand on the
equality of the human race" (79). Indeed, she believed th at "it was in the
order of nature that people who were poorly off should be snubbed" even by
their own family and Gritty, patient and enduring, felt it was her lot to
placate her brother and to subm it to his tempers. She is neither cunning
nor cavalier; Mrs. Moss is merely one of the "simplest women in the world"
(80). Most importantly, she is "too fagged by toil and children to have
strength left for any pride" (81).
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The contrast between Mr. Tulliver— money lender and practitioner of
reproductive m oderation— and his sister— baby producer and farm er’ s wife—
clearly dem arcates one difference between a m oderate and a monstrous
family. It is implied by the narrative and characterization of Gritty and her
family th a t the poor have children to excess; those of the upper or middle
classes exercise moderation. It could be argued th at farm ing families
generally have more children so th at there are more hands to work the
farm, but the sharp contrast between Mr. Tulliver and his sister seems to
hint at something more. By implication, the upper and middle classes are
sexually well-mannered, better educated to control their appetites and less
likely to provide tangible effects of their anim al passions. Either the upper
and middle classes are practicing abstinence in m arriage or they, unlike
farm er's wives, have access to contraception. It appears th a t birth control
was available in the world Eliot created, but th at only those economically
able to support children were able to prevent themselves from having them.
Economics seem to have defined the num ber of children one was able and
willing to have. For Gritty, like other poor women, there appears to have
been no choice but to reproduce because she could not afford contraception.
As a result, Victor Frankenstein's vision of the monstrous family begins to
m aterialize as the working-class family of m id-nineteeth-century Britain.
From the late eighteenth through the beginning of the twentieth
centuries, tam ing this family became the explicit aim of birth controllers
working under the guise of population control and w ithin the popular and
problematic science of eugenics. By the m id-nineteenth century, the
language of contraception had been codified and made acceptable by the
discourse of population control. During this same tim e, the literary image
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of the doctor changed dram atically from Tristram Shandy's bum bling Dr.
Slop to George Eliot's medically progressive Tertius Lydgate and H arriet
M artineau's educated and compassionate general practitioner Mr. Hope,
the hero of her novel Deerbrook (1839). With the advent of doctors as
protagonists, medicine, which appears only a t the m argins of earlier
novels such as Edgeworth's The History of Miss Betsv Thoughtless, took
center stage. Eliot, for example, depicted the medical world as part of every
day human interaction in alm ost all of her novels. For Eliot, it appears as if
medicine cannot be removed from any description of m id-nineteenth-
century England; medicine and the medical practitioner had become a p art
of daily life. Consequently, nineteenth- century novels make more visible
and tangible the traces of medical advice for women which I have been
reading throughout my analysis. Most specifically, prophylactic
metaphors are literalized in the politics surrounding the large, working-
class family.
The desire to control the monstrous family provided an acceptable
excuse for discussions of contraception, bringing prophylactics into
political, intellectual and literary discourses. In effect, medicine and
politics changed the language of contraception, m aking it a public issue
instead of a privilege of the upper classes. This linguistic shift illustrates a
move from the discourse of modesty, domesticity and gentility— where
propriety, virtue and inheritance are at stake— toward the language of
science. For birth controllers, as Britain moved tow ard industrialization
and urban centers, it became scientifically necessary to control population.
George Eliot's introduction to Felix Holt makes reference to the "many-
breeding pauperism" which was beginning to shape the nation in 1831 (75).
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Concerns about poverty and overpopulation helped to set the stage for the
transfer of reproductive concerns from the genteel to the poor; from the
society woman who had, at all costs, to retain her modesty, to the nation
which, at all costs, had to preserve its social well-being. Public discussions
of contraception made the corporeal body into the civic body-a body that
needed control.
PREVENTATIVE CHECKS
In 1798 when Thomas M althus published his influential An Essay
On the Principles of Population, he did not directly mention contraception
as a check to w hat he perceived as B ritain's impending population problem.
He did, however, take others to task for assum ing th at individuals would be
willing (and able) to control their sexual appetites for the good of the nation
as a whole. Most specifically, M althus engaged the work of Godwin who,
he claimed, erroneously assum ed th a t "passion between the sexes may in
time be extinguished" (9). Against this M althus posits two factors th a t he
claims are constant, "fixed laws of [humanl nature": "First th a t food is
necessary to the existence of man. Secondly, th at the passion between the
sexes is necessary, and will rem ain nearly in its present state" (8). On the
second point, Malthus asserts th a t there has not yet been any evidence to
prove th at "passions" between the sexes have abated. Therefore, Malthus
argued th at there must be positive checks to population or the num ber of
people in Britain would eventually exceed the amount of food available to
sustain them. The result would be w hat M althus calls misery and vice.
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M althus deploys the term s misery and vice as the opposites of what
he m ight call n atural virtue. C atherine G allagher notes th a t M althus
"sees the unleashed power of population, the reproducing body, as th at
which will eventually destroy the very prosperity th a t made it fecund,
replacing health and innocence w ith misery and vice." For M althus,
Gallagher continues, "the hum an body is a profoundly am bivalent
phenomenon" (84). On the one hand, M althus recognizes the desiring body,
the sexually active body which feels physical passion. On the other,
M althus sees a restrained body— one which holds in check its natural
appetites in order to effect hum an virtue. In both instances, M althus
assum es the existence of real, m aterial bodies which together comprise a
national body. In his scenario, each real body becomes responsible for the
health of the national body. Each individual body m ust check his (Malthus
is specifically speaking about men) desires to ensure th at the nation is kept
from misery and vice. In his first mention of misery and vice, M althus
points to nature to provide a more complete understanding of the
im portance of hum an virtue.
Through the anim al and vegetable kingdoms, nature has scattered
the seeds of life abroad with the most profuse and liberal hand. She
has been comparatively sparing in the room, and the nourishm ent
necessary to rear them. The germs of existence contained in this
spot of earth, with ample food, and ample room to expand in, would
fill millions of worlds in the course of a few thousand years.
Necessity, th at imperious all-pervading law of nature, restrains
them within the prescribed bounds. The race of plants, and the
race of anim als shrink under this great restrictive law. And the
race of man cannot, by any efforts of reason, escape from it. Among
plants and anim als its effects are w aste of seed, sickness, and
prem ature death. Among m ankind, misery and vice. The former,
misery, is an absolutely necessary consequence of it. Vice is a
highly probable consequence, and we therefore see it abundantly
prevail; but it ought not, perhaps, to be called an absolutely
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necessary consequence. The ordeal of virtue is to resist all
temptation to evil. (9)
Humans, like plants or anim als, need to recognize necessity and obey the
"all-pervading law of nature." M althus moves from a scientific discourse--
"waste of seed"--to a moral discourse of vice. His description of necessity
and the necessary reliance on virtue to counter vice postulates virtue itself
as a prophylactic. Misery is an "absolute necessary consequence" of the
"great restrictive law" which regulates population, vice a "highly probable
consequence" unless virtue can keep it in check. M althus's powerful
prophylactic, virtue, helps m ankind "to resist all tem ptation to evil."
The problem is th at not all humans can be counted on to use virtue as
their contraception. M althus works under the assumption, however, th at
hum ans, especially gentlemen, should be able to exercise virtue for the good
of the nation. His essay assum es a contraceptive language which is never
made explicit; it is a language th a t is especially confusing when one reads
th at M althus objected to contraception— literal prophylactics— especially
between m arried couples.1 M althus's Essav assumes th a t contraception
exists in the form of "preventative checks," but only in a metaphorical
sense. Such checks should not take the form of intercourse with protection
but should be the protection from intercourse itself. By preventing the early
4 n his "Introduction" to M althus’s collected works, E.A. W rigley writes:
"Malthus disapproved of the practice of contraception within marriage, and in any case,
quite apart from the moral questions at issue over its use. it was statistically a negligible
phenomenon in England and most of the rest of Europe during his lifetime" (23). Indeed,
in the 1817 edition of his Essay, M althus stated: "I should always particularly reprobate
any artificial and unnatural modes of checking population, both on account of their
immorality and their tendency to remove a necessary stim ulus to industry" (393).
W rigley is wrong, however, to assum e that contraception was a "negligible phenomenon"
in England. For a thorough discussion of contraception in England see Angus McLaren's
A History of Contraception (Oxford: Blackwell, 1990) and Reproductive Rituals (London
and New York: Methuen, 1984). Wrigley claim s that M althus disapproved of
contraception within m arriage, w hile enticingly leaving open the possibility of
contraception before m arriage.
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attachm ent to one woman, by postponing m arriage and by taking a wife
and having a family only when he can afford it, a gentlem an keeps him self
and his family from misery. The consequence is th a t he risks vice. By
postponing the virtuous act of m arriage and family, a gentlem an might
seek out pleasures th a t are less virtuous-- pleasures th at are constructed as
vices.
M althus makes much of the role of gentlem en in suggesting th at
individuals m ust control th eir appetites. He states again and again th at
this control m ust be self-control because he understands th a t passions
between the sexes will always exist. Even though some populations do not
increase at a rapid rate, he claims th at "we have sufficient reason to think
th at this natural propensity I passion between the sexes I exists still in.
undiminished vigour" (26). The vigorous nature of such passions seems to
imply a potential lack of self-control. M althus's linguistic choice— his use of
the word "vigour"-suggests consuming appetites th at are difficult to keep
in check, but he claims that
the preventative check appears to operate in some degree through
all the ranks of society in England. There are some men, even in
the highest rank, who are prevented from m arrying by the idea of
the expenses th at they m ust retrench, and the fanciest pleasures
th at they m ust deprive themselves of, on the supposition of having a
family. These considerations are certainly trivial; but a preventive
foresight of this kind has objects of much greater weight for its
contemplation as we go lower. (26)
Before turning his attention to the laboring classes, who comprise the
subject of most of the essay, M althus explores the conscience of the
gentleman. M althus works from the assum ption th a t virtue and intellect
will lead a gentlem an to the right decision: to postpone m arriage and
family. He assum es th a t a gentlem an will use compassion toward the
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object of his passions. If decency fails, the result reads much like the story
of G ritty Moss who bears the consequences of an im prudent marriage.
M althus's plot of misery is G ritty’s plight.
A m an of liberal education, but w ith an income only ju st sufficient
to enable him to associate in the rank of gentleman, m ust feel
absolutely certain, th at if he m arries and has a family, he shall be
obliged, if he mixes at all in society, to rank him self with moderate
farm ers, and the lower class of tradesm en. The woman th at a m an
of education would naturally make the object of his choice, would be
one brought up in the same tastes and sentim ents with himself,
and used to the familiar intercourse of society totally different from
th at to which she m ust be reduced by m arriage. Can a man
consent to place the object of his affection in a situation so
discordant probably, to her tastes and inclinations? (27)
If a man makes such an im prudent choice and does not check his desire to
marry, the result is misery. Not only will his wife be unhappy, but he will
sacrifice his social position; he will fall to a different class.
In her essay "Malthus, Godwin, Wordsworth and the Spirit of
Solitude," Frances Ferguson suggests th a t the woman in the above scenario
acts as the "most effective prophylactic in the Essay." (117). Ferguson
writes:
While the women of the hunting and herding societies had their
misery reserved for them, it was rendered as a misery occasioned
by excessive labor and inadequate visibility: they were always in
danger of being absorbed into the production of the tyrant or the w ar
hero. The woman who might be a suitable match for our young
man of liberal education, however, is more visible than her
predecessors precisely because she does not labor, because her
produce is happiness or misery unm ediated by any gainful
employment. The very palpability of this im aginary woman's
possible unhappiness suggests th a t she has a consciousness th a t
counts, but the "idea of grief' th a t comes to M althus as he
contemplates her is the most effective prophylactic in the Essay.
(117)
Since for M althus m arriage means m arriage and children, any young
man of liberal education who m arries m ust be prepared to provide for a
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family. While men m ust actively check their passions, it is the body of a
woman which is used as birth control. The non-producing, genteel woman
acts as a check to misery and vice. She stands as a lesson for gentlemen: a
gentleman should never perm it his sexual desires or attractions to produce
a miserable family. The vision of Gritty Moss should act as a preventative
check. Problematically, however, the woman's body never appears in
M althus's Essav as anything other than th a t which produces children and,
consequently, leads to misery. All prevention is left to gentlemen, and
women m ust subm it if men do not exercise a check to their passions. Men
are responsible for social misery, but women and th eir children, most
materially, pay the price.
When H arriet M artineau wrote "Weal and Woe in Garveloch" as p art
of her Illustrations of Political Economy (1832), she dram atized and gave
voice to the female side of the population dilemma; she voiced M althus's
concerns through her female characters. M artineau published her
Illustrations in installm ents which were highly popular; they earned
M artineau an independent living and made her a household name in most
of London. Deirdre David has noted th at when they appeared in the
Monthly Repository, "readers awaited monthly publication of the
Illustrations with a fervour sim ilar to th a t displayed in anticipation of the
newest num ber of a serialised novel" (40). The tales are, in effect, m ini
novels depicting the principles of political economy which were in
circulation during the early nineteenth century. M artineau retold in
fictionalized form the political and intellectual lessons of her day, and the
Illustrations helped to popularize complex social and philosophical
principles by thinkers such as John S tu art Mill, Jerem y Bentham and
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Thomas M althus. David has argued th at M artineau helped to feminize the
role of the intellectual in nineteenth-century England. By fictionalizing the
writings of many powerful, intellectual men, M artineau helped to give
voice to the role of women within a culture which believed th at fiction was
the domain of women and intellect the realm of m en.2 In her
Autobiography. M artineau records the duties of a woman in ninteenth-
century England th at made it difficult to become a writer.
When I was young, it was not thought proper for young ladies to
study very conspicuously; and especially w ith pen in hand. Young
ladies (at least in provincial towns) were expected to sit down in the
parlour to sew,— during which reading aloud was perm itted,— or to
practice their music; but so as to be fit to receive callers, without
any signs of blue-stockingism which could be reported abroad. . . .
and thus my first studies in philosophy were carried on with great
care and reserve. (100-1)
By merging the fictional and philosophical— a woman's voice w ith "male"
ideas— M artineau challenged the Victorian belief th a t women should not
tax their minds with hard intellectual principles. And, as we shall see, by
delineating the political issues of her time, M artineau broached issues
which met with controversy precisely because she was a woman w riting
about subjects improper for women.
^The m ost enduring criticism of M artineau's w riting is that it is derivative. Her
Autobiography aids this perception, especially her description of writing Illustrations of
Political Economy. Her recollection of th is is found in volume I, "Fourth Period," Section
I. M artineau recalls reading about each subject found in the Illustrations and then
developing her characters to recite the lessons she had learned. In addition, Martineau
writes frequently of being approached by certain legislators who ask her to write their
position on public issues. Martineau leaves the im pression that she merely wrote up what
other people hired her to write. For summaries and refutations of Martineau's critics see
Susan H oecker-Drysdale's Harriet M artineau: F irst Woman Sociologist (Oxford and
New York: Berg, 1992), V alerie Kossew Pichanick's H arriet M artineau: The Woman and
her Work (Ann Arbor: The U of Michigan P, 1980), especially chapter III, and Valerie
Sander’s Reason over Passion: Harriet M artineau and the Victorian Novel (Sussex: The
Harvester Press, 1986), especially chapter II.
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257
Because she was a woman it is fitting th at M artineau took on the role
of an intellectual w riter of fiction, entering the political domain through the
fictional. In so doing, she began her political life by telling stories. It is
doubly fitting and ironic th at she took as one of her subjects reproduction—
the preventative checks which she, like M althus, believed should operate to
keep population in check and, consequently, the whole of society from
misery and vice. M artineau, in her recasting of M althus's theories, gives
voice to the object of unhappiness described by Malthus and noted by
Ferguson, making her female protagonist, Ella, an advocate of population
politics. As David notes, such double purposes created a bind for
M artineau as a Victorian intellectual. By espousing the politics of her
intellectual "fathers," M artineau repeated intellectual positions which
rendered women objects. At the same tim e, however, she proved women
could be active intellectuals them selves— active producers of political ideas.
David insists, quite persuasively, th at we see Victorian intellectual women
as both"saboteurs and collaborators," challenging but often repeating
"Victorian directives for the proper uses of woman's mind" (x). Ella's
character perfectly illustrates this double bind.
In "Weal and Woe in Garveloch," M artineau addresses the
controversial issue of population control presented by M althus in his Essay
On the Principles of Population. Through her character Ella M artineau
popularized and humanized M althus's theory of population control over
thirty years after it was w ritten. In 1832, M althus's ideas still had
currency; the population of B ritain "was rising sharply (between 1801 and
1851 the population of Britain doubled) and the increase, though attributable
to a declining death rate and especially to declining infant m ortality, was
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258
seen by contemporaries as evidence of a rising birthrate" (Pichanick, 63-4).
M artineau, like M althus, believed th a t an uncontrolled increase in the
population would be harmful to the nation as a whole; each individual had
to be responsible for checking his or her own passions for the good of the
nation. Like M althus, who claimed th a t "a labourer who m arries w ithout
being able to support a family, may in some respects be considered as an
enemy to his fellow labourers," M artineau believed th a t each individual
should play a role in m aintaining the proper balance between population
and employment (33-4). "Weal and Woe in Garveloch" illustrates w hat
happens when this balance is frustrated. M artineau's combination of
fiction and philosophy grafted real faces onto M althus's large principles;
though the storytelling is often didactic, one cannot help getting caught up
in the plight of want that M artineau fictionalizes. Instead of being directed
toward women, as were the contem porary m anuals and conduct books they
resemble, M artineau's lessons were crafted for wider consumption. In lieu
of addressing herself to women's work and the improvement of an
individual household, she addressed herself to the betterm ent of the
national body.
Ella is introduced into the Illustrations in "Ella of Garveloch." She is
the only daughter of a poor farm er on the island of Garveloch in Scotland.
Her mother has been dead for m any years, so when her father dies also she
becomes the head of the family. Ella takes charge of her three younger
brothers— Fergus, Ronald and Archie; she negotiates with the landlord to
develop a piece of abandoned property by the sea where she and her brothers
can fish and harvest peat. Since this is a tale about the principles of rent,
there is elaborate detail surrounding these negotiations. Frequently in the
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259
tale we are returned to the principles upon which one m ust pay rent and
the m anner in which rent is decided. Each brother in turn asks questions
and is then asked to repeat the principles he is taught. And, as in all of the
tales, the lessons are summarized at the end of the narrative.
During the tale, Ella makes a promise to the "laird" to improve her
land and pay rent according to her improvements and the am ount of money
she is able to make from the land. The two agree upon a fair sum and the
tale illustrates how Ella and her brothers go about improving the land.
There are side plots of jealousy between farm ers and illustrations of family
dram a, but in the end Ella, of "masculine gait" and strong mind, is able to
pay the rent and satisfy her commitments. The tale ends in prosperity;
Ella m arries her childhood love, Angus; they work the land and establish a
small fishing business; and though one of the brothers dies through the
greed of the laird's assistant, Angus and Ella seem poised to live a happy
life in Garveloch.
"Weal and Woe in Garveloch" illustrates th at this is not to be the
case. By the beginning of this tale Ella and Angus have nine children.
They are quite prosperous in their fishing business and expect to be able to
provide for all of their children. Their prosperity has brought others to the
small island as well as a fishing company which employs most of the
island's population. Problems arise early in the tale; the sea has been over
fished, and there is an impending threat th a t the islanders will soon run
out of food. The ground is slow to yield a harvest and people have not stored
up a supply of goods. Acts of violence begin to disrupt the community. In
one instance, Ron, who is lazy and never works for him self or the good of
the community, destroys Fergus's nets, m aking it impossible for Fergus to
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260
pay his rent or provide for his family. Jealousy leads neighbors to sabotage
each other's prosperity, providing an occasion for Angus and Mr.
Mackenzie, the m agistrate, to explain the principles of population and
sustenance. Mackenzie speaks first:
"Do you not see distress and ruin in full prospect if they are not
checked, and if, moreover, the temper of the people be not directly
reversed?"
"Our resources are so improved th a t I would fain hope the
best; and yet our num bers increase in full proportion, so th at we
have no need to waste any of our capital."
"I think not indeed. . . ."
"Everything depends upon the food keeping pace w ith the
employment."
"The farm s are improving to the utm ost th a t skill and labour
can make them improve. . . so th at some farm s produce actually
double what they did when the fishery began." (41-2)
This, however, is not enough. Angus fears th a t the population is growing
too quickly, at a rate unequal to the amount of food produced. He
comments: "as the num ber of people doubles itself for ever, while the
produce of the land does not, the people m ust increase faster than the
produce" (42). Using this equation, Angus dem onstrates M althus's claim
that population increases in a geometrical ratio while subsistence
increases in an arithm etic ratio. Eventually there will not be enough food to
sustain all the inhabitants of the island. Ella, m other of nine, concludes:
"It [population| seems a thing to be checked and not encouraged" (44).
However, because the island seems prosperous for the moment,
individuals do not check themselves. "More than a few parties decided th at
their courtship should end in immediate m arriage, and never doubted the
perfect propriety of making use of a season of prosperity for the purpose"
(64). Even though Ella and Angus have nine children, we are told that they
were not im prudent in their decision to have a large family. Angus and
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Ella are privy to the principles of political economy-they understand th at if
one has a large family they m ust put something aside for less prosperous
moments. M artineau tells us th a t "none were more provident than Angus
and Ella, or provident in a wiser m anner. Seeing so clearly as they did the
importance of an increase of capital in a society which was adding to its
numbers every day, they reflected and consulted much on the modes and
rates of increase of capital differently applied, and saw th at the interest of
the Company, and over every individual employed by it, was one and the
same" (52). In other words, the civic body is equal to the corporeal body.
Both Ella and Angus understand th a t the whole is effected by the individual
and th at the violence executed by one person in a small community affects
the prospects of the community as a whole. Because others act imprudently
in the face of impending scarcity, all m ust suffer. This includes Ella,
Angus and their family; though they understand the principles of
population and scarcity, they m ust subm it to the folly of the community.
During the worst of the famine--when most don't have enough to sustain
their fam ilies— Ella's friend Katie challenges her for having had nine
children. Ella replies th at she had them at a time in which they believed
they would be able to provide for themselves. Ella feels the hardships but is
exempt from being a cause. Angus, Ella and her brother Ronald are the
only ones with capital to purchase food; however, the other islanders have
made it impossible to find any. All three are victims; none is accused of
having contributed to the population problem.
Ronald's story is used to illustrate the type of restraint th at should be
used as a preventative check to population. Ronald is in love with Katie, the
widow of his best friend. He has loved her for years and when he is finally
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prosperous enough to offer her m arriage he decides against it, opting to be
her friend instead of her husband. At first this is a confusing decision--
Katie does not understand why his intentions appear to have changed. The
conversation between Ella and Katie on this subject provides the only
tangible solution to population problems. When Katie questions Ella as to
Ronald's intentions, she replies: "It is the state of society in the islands,
Katie, th a t makes him and other thoughtful men give up the intention of
marrying." Ella notes that, "it is not for him self only, but for you and your
children, and for us and for society, th at he thinks and acts as he does" (94-
5). She continues:
"If a man used his hands to pull down his neighbor's house, or his
passion or anger to disturb the society in which he lives, we should
think it no excuse that Providence had given him his n atural
powers, or made him enjoy th eir exercise. How is it more
excusable for a man to bring children into the world, when there
are so many to be fed th at every one th at is born must help to starve
one already living?" (96)
Ronald acts for the good of society while Katie notes that "it is plain that
Providence wills restraint here as in the case of other passions" (96). Ella
agrees th a t "we have the power of lim iting our numbers to agree w ith the
food supply. This is the gentle check which is put into our own hands; and
if we will not use it, we must not repine if h arsh er checks follow" (97). The
ability to check oneself is w hat separates hum ans from savages. Ella
explains: "In a savage life, m arriage may be a contract between a man and
a woman only, for their mutual pleasure; but if they lay claim to the
protection and advantages of society, they are responsible to society. They
have no right to provide for a dim inution of its resources" (97-8). Indeed,
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every individual body helps to construct the national body and thus is
responsible for keeping it in good health.
M artineau's tale constructs a truly national body which has no room
for savages or for those who live outside of its borders. To illustrate the
results of overpopulation, M artineau tu rn s to China and India. These are
the lands of savage bodies— overproducing bodies which drain the resources
of their countries. Katie and Ella repeat the reports they have heard about
population practices in China. Katie speaks first:
"Oh Ella! did your husband ever tell you of the children of
China?"
"Yes, but I scarcely believed even his word for it. Who told
you?"
"I have read it in more books th an one; and I know th at the
same is done in India; so I am afraid it is all too true. In India it is
a very common thing for female children to be destroyed as soon as
born."
"The temptation is strong Katie, where the people are so poor
th a t many hundred thousand at a tim e die of famine. But child
m urder is yet more common in China where no punishm ent
follows, and nothing can exceed the distress for food. In great
cities, new-born babes are nightly laid in the streets to perish, and
many more are thrown into the river, and carried away before their
p arents' eyes...."
"There is nothing so corrupting as poverty, Ella; and there is
no poverty like that of the Chinese." (101)
China is called the "richest country in the world," and yet it cannot sustain
all of its people. Katie continues: "What country is so rich as China at this
day? Yet the m ultitudes eat putrid dogs and cats, and live in boats for want
of a house, and follow the English ships, to pick up and devour the most
disgusting garbage that they throw overboard" (102). The lesson is not to
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perm it B ritain to become like China, "a nation which m ultiplies its
numbers w ithout a corresponding increase of food" (102).3
In M artineau's schem a, Chinese m others are only m arginally worse
than British ladies of fashion. Ella and Katie initiate a discussion of
reproduction and class, and the discussion of class most explicitly hints at
preventative checks other th an deferred m arriage. It begins with reference
to Noreen. Noreen and her husband Dan are im m igrants from Ireland.
Dan is lazy; he beats his wife and children, and the couple produce many
babies which die from want. None of this checks their rate of reproduction.
It is noted th at in a new colony where population is valued, Noreen and Dan
would be an asset. On Garveloch, Noreen is destined to be "too like many a
Highland m other;-she may tell of her twenty children, and leave but one or
two behind her" (99). Katie observes that "neither the very rich nor the very
poor leave such large families behind them as the middling classes; and if
the reason is known, it seems to me very like murder not to prevent it" (100).
"Very like m urder not to prevent it": the phrase resonates through
the rest of the tale. M artineau, however, tries to diffuse this statem ent in
the discussion th at follows by drawing out more clearly the distinctions
among the lower, middle and upper classes. The lower and upper classes
are coupled in a strange comparison. At first they appear equal in that
neither class leaves many children behind. In the end, they leave fewer
SThis is a particularly odd conversation to find in a fictionalized narrative about a
poor island in Scotland. M artineau's Chinese example seem to come from the liberal-
imperial stockhouse of her tim e, providing an easy way to mark the distinction between
"savages" and the vastly more civilized British. The aw kw ardness of th is conversation
as fiction makes it clear that the state has penetrated every aspect of life, including whether
or not M artineau's isolated islanders marry each other. As such it perfectly illustrates my
position that birth control was no longer a matter of private modesty but of the national
w ell-being.
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265
children behind for drastically different reasons. Like Noreen, mothers of
the lower classes lose their children to sickness and want. However, "those
who live in luxury and dissipation have fewer children bom to them of any
class; but those th a t are born are guarded from the w ants and diseases
which cut off the families of the very poor" (100). The upper classes can
both prevent themselves from having children and better protect them
when they do. It is implied, though never stated, th a t the upper classes
prevent children. A reader is led to assum e th a t they do this through
deferred m arriage or virtue; however, the lady of fashion is immediately
compared to the over-reproducing Noreen. In effect, this comparison
points up the falseness of the reader's assum ption. Katie observes:
It seems to me th at a lady of fashion, who gives up her natural rest
for feasting and playing cards all night long in a hot room, and lets
herself be driven about in a close carriage instead of taking the air
on her own limbs, can have no more wish to rear a large healthy
family than Noreen, who lets her babe dangle as if she means to
break its back, and give the poor thing nothing but potatoes, when it
ought to be nourished with the best milk and wholesome bread.
( 101)
Both Noreen and the lady of fashion are figured as producers. The latter,
however, can choose her moments of production; the former is always
figured as an over-producer. N either escapes the censure of Katie and Ella
who are as disgusted with Noreen as they are with the gentility of the lady
of fashion. They approve of neither the carelessness of Noreen nor the self-
imposed fragility of their mythic lady.
"Very like m urder not to prevent it" resonates w ith M artineau's
encouragement of gentle checks to population. Her phrase helps readers to
think of "murder" in its less literal form: prevention or contraception.
Considering the fact th a t the tale moves directly to the discussion of
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Chinese m others, it is clear th at M artineau's is a tale about prevention. As
such, it cannot escape the specter of contraception— th at which works
against the misery, m urder and fam ine of which she writes. Her
condemnation of Chinese and Indian infanticide makes room for the
possibility th a t there are more hum ane checks to pregnancy. M artineau
does not use Ronald's deferral of m arriage, discussed above, as the end of
her tale. She proceeds to a more complex discussion of women from
different classes and so leads a reader to assum e th at there are other
means by which one can check population. By way of concluding the
discussion between Ella and Katie, M artineau presents a m ini-editorial on
population which is applicable to the problems of all cities, not ju st the
small community of Garveloch. She declares th at "in every city, however
crowded w ith a half-starved population, there are many more who do their
utm ost to encourage population than can give a sound reason for their so
doing" (103). These people are deluded. The hospitals are overflowing and
funeral bells are forever tolling the m isery of overpopulation. When those
who encourage population observe more closely they can see the principles
that have been illustrated by "Weal and Woe in G arveloch"-that capital
increases at a slower rate than population and thus inevitably leads to a
deficiency of food. Ella and Katie, "sensible and unprejudiced," have seen
the tru th of overpopulation. After looking at both sides of the issue, they
come to the conclusion that "there rem ained not a doubt, after calculating
numbers and resources, th at there m ust be some check to the increase of
the people, and the prudential check is infinitely preferable to those of
misery and vice" (104). The definition of "prudential" is nebulous, left to the
reader's discretion.
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Valerie Kossew Pichanick has suggested th a t M artineau broached
the question of birth control "cautiously." Pichanick w rites th a t M artineau
"skirted the issue and her recommendations were not very specific." She
concludes th at M artineau "hinted th at the im prudent indulgence of love
would increase im poverishment, but she suggested no more stringent
palliative than late m arriage and prudence" (64). By the time we reach the
sum m ary of principles at the end of "Weal and Woe in Garveloch,"
however, it is clear th a t each individual should be responsible for his or her
own "prudential" checks and th a t these checks are not wholly "innocent."
Gentlemen are no longer alone responsible for checking themselves.
M artineau's version of population control includes women as agents who
help to circulate M althusian propaganda; they are as well educated as the
men and participate freely in discussions of political economy. M althus's
"gentlemen" are no longer in charge of women's bodies, using their
potential unhappiness as the only form of birth control. M artineau's
women have been educated to understand the relationship between
population and food.4 They are also familiar w ith the tragedies in other
countries, and as a result, the specter of their unhappiness is no longer the
only m aterial check to population. Instead, they are agents of population
4Martineau is driven by Malthus's proposition that population grows faster than the
food supply. This assum ption is more complex than M althus, M artineau or political
economy in general allows. What appears to them as an absolute lack of foodstuff may
have been in part a question of distribution--laws to assure the equitable distribution of
goods and improvements in transportation to get food to the urban table before it spoiled and
at a reasonable price. M althus and Martineau use scarcity as a justification for their
politics; however, another aspect of the population debate was to construct more active state
and social policies to ensure that the food being produced reached the people most in need.
That M althus and M artineau do not advocate such reforms marks them of their time.
After the Reform Bill (1832) the specter of monstrous family could be tamed by more
interventionist social policy than M althus im agined. The inab ility of M althus's
generation to encourage such rem edies suggests that their fears of the uncontrolled family
run deeper than their rhetoric o f m athem atical ratios acknowledges.
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268
control who circulate and discuss information about the ways in which one
should check his or her own production. M althus's gentlem an of liberal
education has been transform ed into Ella and K atie-w om en whose lived
experience is their education.
By the end of the tale, readers are led to understand th at even though
Ronald is the only character who literally checks his reproduction,
M artineau's women are equally capable of making such gestures. Most
im portantly, there is more to population control than deferred marriage.
M artineau hints at this in the first part of her summ ary.
The increase of population is necessarily limited by the means of
subsistence.
Since successive portions of capital yield less and less return, and
the human species produce at a constantly accelerated rate, there is
a perpetual tendency in population to press upon the mass for
subsistence.
The ultim ate checks by which population is kept down to the level of
the means of subsistence are vice and misery.
Since the ends of life are virtue and happiness, these checks ought
to be superseded by the milder methods which exist w ithin man's
reach.
These evils may be delayed by promoting the increase of capital, and
superseded by restraining the increase of population. (140)
The word "evils" functions two ways. First, it refers to the M althusian
formula of "misery and vice," the n atural results of overpopulation.
"Evils," however, is also positioned in such a way as to imply th a t some
checks to population are not as innocent as deferred m arriage. There is
nothing in the tale to suggest th at deferred m arriage is an evil in and of
itself. On the other hand, the "milder methods" of population control to
which M artineau alludes would seem to gesture tow ard som ething more
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"evil." "Milder methods" resonates with "very like m urder not to prevent
it" to indicate a prophylactic project more complex than M althusian virtue.
Because they were w ritten in 1832, both phrases make implicit reference to
the prophylactic devices th at were available in Britain at th at time,
including the contraceptive sponge, the condom and the diaphragm .
"Evils" thus carries with it a double implication which would have required
the caution Pichanick observes and would have also created anxiety in the
young, female author.
In her Autobiography (1877), M artineau states th at "on five occasions
in my life I have found myself obliged to write and publish w hat I entirely
believed would be ruinous to my reputation and prosperity" (199). Her
Garveloch stories stand out as one of these occasions. However, like the
rest of her series on political economy, M artineau felt th at she was bringing
im portant lessons to public attention for the public good. She fought to get
her series published, having to settle with the publisher Charles Fox for
unfavorable terms which made him a fortune and her a living. But,
M artineau writes, "authorship has never been with me a m atter of choice.
I have not done it for am usem ent, or for money, or for fame or for any
reason but because I could not help it. Things were pressing to be said; and
there was more or less evidence th a t I was the person to say them" (188).
W riting the Illustrations of Political Economy was a p art of M artineau's
civic duty, and authorship was "the fulfillm ent of [her] n atu ral function"
(188). While engaging the population question, M artineau writes th at she
was sensible of the risk:
When the course of my exposition brought me to the Population
subject, I, with my youthful and provincial mode of thought and
feeling,— brought up too am idst the prudery which is found in its
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great force in our middle class,--could not but be sensible th at I
risked much in w riting and publishing on a subject which was not
universally treated in the pure, benevolent, and scientific spirit of
M althus himself. (200)
The "Population subject," in M artineau's schem a, is a question of science.
It is a valid and "pure" subject for exploration because it is given legitimacy
under the banner of science. M artineau w rites th a t she "felt th at the
subject was one of science, and therefore perfectly easy to treat in itself'
(200). Like all of political economy, population was one sphere of the science
of hum an duty. The subject is given authority and evacuated of risk
because its spirit is scientific; it is neither a moral nor a malevolent issue.
In her reflections M artineau admits th a t the population subject pushes
against the prudery of the middle classes, but she positions it as one of
many questions for the edification of this prudish class. In "Weal and Woe
in Garveloch" it was the middling, or w orking classes, which were most in
need of illum ination about the problems of overpopulation. And, though
she "was aw are th a t some evil associations had gathered" around
discussion of preventative checks, M artineau pursued the subject with the
authority of science.
M artineau's memory of w riting "Weal and Woe in Garveloch" points
to a recognition of the double meanings present in her tale. The
"prudential" checks are never completely defined in the tale; they rem ain
just below the surface of the text. M artineau, however, realized the
dangerous path she was taking.
While w riting 'Weal and Woe in Garveloch,' the perspiration many
a tim e stream ed down my face, though I knew th at there was not a
line in it which might not be read aloud in any family. The misery
arose from my seeing how the sim plest statem ents and reasonings
might and probably would be perverted. I said nothing to any body;
and, when the num ber was finished, I read it aloud to my m other
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and aunt. If there had been any opening whatever for doubt or
dread, I was sure th at these two ladies would have given me
abundant w arning and exhortation,— both from their very keen
sense of propriety and their anxious affection for me. But they were
complacent and easy as they had been interested and attentive. I
saw th at all ought to be safe. But it was evidently very doubtful
whether all would be safe. (200)
M artineau's reply to those who thought it was an unsafe and improper
subject was to subm it th at she treated the subject, as did Malthus, as "a
strictly philosophical question" (202). Philosophy and science would elevate
it above prurient discourse and perverted minds. To those who complained,
M artineau's reply was: "I find no difficulty in it; and there can be no
difficulty in it for those who approach it w ith a single mind. To such I
address myself. If any others should come w hispering to me w hat I need
not listen to, I shall shift my trum pet, and take up my knitting" (202).
Practically deaf, M artineau would remove her ear trum pet and refuse to
listen to her critics. Of M althus, M artineau concludes, "All I know is th a t
a more simple-minded, virtuous man, full of domestic affections, than Mr.
M althus, could not be found in all of England." His works, she insists, are
concerned w ith "domestic virtue" and "happiness" (209).
It would have been impossible for M artineau, in 1832, to ignore the
availability of contraception in England. "Weal and Woe in Garveloch"
might have repeated the virtuous measures promoted by M althus, but it
was w ritten w ithin a different cultural context. The anxiety expressed by
M artineau in her Autobiography reveals her understanding th at the stakes
had changed in the thirty years since M althus's Essav. One could no
longer invoke "gentle checks" without also m aking reference to more
tangible checks and contraceptive devices. It would seem th a t M artineau's
anxiety was not about her tale in particular, but about how it would be
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272
effected by other discourses of contraception. She was afraid th a t she would
be viewed as an advocate of such devices as the contraceptive sponge—
devices tinged with impropriety, especially for a young, female w riter. The
Autobiography, published thirty years after "Weal and Woe in Garveloch,"
covers M artineau's tracks by using virtuous intentions, science and
philosophy as the shields behind which she hid her vastly interpretable
pleas for contraception.
F r o m P o p u l a t i o n C o n t r o l t o C o n t r a c e p t i v e S p o n g e s
M artineau and M althus were vitally concerned with the health of the
civic body, and no part of this body was more in need of care than the
laboring classes. M artineau claimed th a t they produced more children
than any other class and, as a result, became a drain on the rest of the
nation. Like the Moss family, the laboring poor were frequently unable to
provide for their children. In the Essav. M althus uses the subject of
population control to attack the Poor Law being proposed in Britain. He
suggests that giving the poor money for each child does not solve the
problems of poverty. Ironically, he argued, such a system of welfare
creates more children. The Poor Law, he contends, will not help the poor,
but hinder the nation as a whole. The laboring classes will become more
dependent on the state while the state pays the price for overpopulation.
Instead of providing for these children, M althus suggests th a t a more
"stringent" check should be put into place.
The most natural and obvious check seemed to be, to make every
man provide for his own children; th a t this would operate in some
respect as a m easure and guide in the increase of population; as it
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m ight be expected th a t no m an would bring children into the world*
for whom he could not find the means of support. (72)
M artineau echoes this sentim ent in "Weal and Woe in Garveloch." One of
the m ain concerns throughout her career was her desire to see wages keep
pace with labor and laborers so th a t the working class could provide for its
children. In "Homes Abroad" (1832) she suggests th at a worker could keep
the ratio of labor to wage fund favorable by migration or em igration. This is
not desertion but duty:
After all, a state is made up of individual members; and, therefore,
whatever most benefits these individuals m ust benefit the state.
Our duty to the state and our duty to ourselves are not opposing
duties. . . On the contrary, a man's duty to his country is to provide
honestly and abundantly, if he can, for him self and his family; and
when this cannot be done a t home it is a breach of duty to stay and
eat up other men's substance, (quoted in Pichanick, 65)
By implication, th at which is best for the working classes is best for the civic
body.
In 1823 Francis Place took up the task of population control w ith the
publication of what was known thereafter as his "diabolical handbill." The
leaflet, addressed to " The M arried of Both Sexes," described in plain
language the problems of overpopulation. Place suggested th a t large
families lead to poverty because having too many mouths to feed means
there will not be enough food for everyone. The means of prevention "were
simple and harmless" (Fryer, 43). Place was not suggesting the gentle
checks offered by either M althus or M artineau, though he was working
from the same principles they espoused. Rather, Place suggested a more
literal method of birth control: the contraceptive sponge. This
contraceptive device consisted of "a piece of sponge, about an inch square,
being placed in the vagina previous to coition, and afterw ards w ithdraw n by
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274
means of a double twisted thread, or bobbin attached to it." The handbill
advertised th a t the sponge would not "diminish the enjoyment of either
party" (Fryer, 43). Its audience was the working class, and the first
handbill to be delivered was sent anonymously to Edward Taylor, founder of
the M anchester G uardian, with a note signed "a sincere well w isher of the
working Classes" (Fryer, 43). While Place's handbill directed population
control specifically at the working classes, his was a double-edged
proposition which left itself open to accusations of eugenics. On the one
hand working-class families would benefit from contraception and raise
their standard of living. On the other, they were treated as monstrous
propagators of a civic body out of control. Contraception aimed at "helping"
the poor eventually became strongly associated with the "science" of
eugenics, a science used to justify racism well into the tw entieth century.
Jerem y Bentham had already made reference to the contraceptive
sponge in 1797. Following close on the heels of M althus's Essav. Bentham
declared th a t "population should be controlled not by a 'prohibitory act’. . .
but by 'a sponge'" (McLaren, 183). Well before M artineau entered the
population discussion or Place delivered his handbill, it is clear th at there
were "real" checks to reproduction in circulation. In stating his case for
the sponge, Bentham declared th at it was better than a "dead letter," a
phrase which indicated th at condoms were already in circulation.
Pessaries were already being prescribed by doctors to keep a woman's
uterus in place, and they were early used as diaphragm s. William H unter,
the pioneering eighteenth-century physician, had included sketches of
pessaries in his illustrated Anatomia uteri gravidi which appeared in 1774.
By 1823, a young John Stuart Mill was distributing birth control leaflets to
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women on m arket days. In the same year, Mill wrote an anonymously
published article for The Black Dwarf advocating birth control:
By checking population, no pain is inflicted, no alarm excited, no
security infringed. It cannot, therefor, on any principles, be termed
immoral; and. . . if it tends to elevate the working people from
poverty and ignorance to affluence and instruction, I am compelled
to regard it as highly moral and virtuous. (756)
Place's handbill and Mill's article illustrate th at literature about
contraception was increasingly directed from the intellectual class toward
the working class. By implication, the middle and upper classes already
knew where and how to procure birth control. Most birth control advocates,
including M artineau, assumed th a t it was the working class which needed
to be educated on such subjects.
M althus's project of prudence and preventive checks was literalized
in the distribution of contraceptive handbills and the availability of
contraceptive devices. Like M althus, nineteenth-century birth controllers
still conceived of their project in terms of virtue. Mill's intended purpose of
elevating the working class "from poverty and ignorance to affluence and
instruction" is conceived of as a "highly moral and virtuous project" for the
betterm ent of workers. Advocates of contraception may have been using
more explicit language to describe their aims, but, like Mill, their
assertions were still grounded in w hat they called virtue. The connotation
of virtue shifted linguistically in Mill's appeal from the way in which it was
used by M althus in the Essav. While for M althus it would have been
immoral to advocate unnatural, contraceptive devices, to Mill it would be
less than virtuous, immoral even, to perm it the working classes
continually to reproduce themselves. He implied th at reproduction, left
unchecked because of the lack of education, would only keep the working
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276
poor impoverished. To keep information from circulating in poor or even
more affluent neighborhoods went counter to his perception of virtue.
While M althus assum ed th a t all hum ans would exercise a "natural"
virtue, Mill and other birth control advocates believed th at artificial virtue,
in the form of contraceptive devices were necessary; "natural" virtue was
not enough. Providing the working poor with the means to regulate their
own fertility, as Place had suggested, would help to counter the problems of
overpopulation and to improve living conditions in the large urban centers
such as M anchester. Relying on the abstract promise of hum an virtue and
the belief th a t "no man would bring children into the world for whom he
could not find the means of support" did little for the material situation of
the working class.
While Mill, like other birth controllers, altered the definition of
virtue, the contraceptive sponge changed women's role in fertility
regulation. M althus and M artineau had both counted on the virtue of
gentlemen to enact population controls. Though M artineau included
women in her schema as advocates of population control, neither she nor
M althus put the power of preventive checks into a woman's hands. If the
virtue of a gentlem an failed to control his desire to m arry and have a
family, the contraceptive sponge could regulate the number of children a
couple produced. Place's handbill had addressed members of both sexes,
but the introduction of the sponge, a device which was to be inserted into a
woman's body, altered the gender dynamics of regulated reproduction.
Unlike a condom, for which a m an was responsible, the sponge provided
women w ith a specific device made expressly for their bodies. And, while a
condom was used prim arily for disease control and carried w ith it
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27 7
connotations of men with prostitutes, the sponge was immediately
described as an instrum ent of birth control and attem pts were made to
point up its virtues. It was a family device, advocates espoused, intended
not to stop all fertility but to provide families, and women in particular,
w ith a method of regulation. In 1877, Annie Besant, the first woman
publically to defend contraception, referred to the condom as "used by men
of loose character as a guard against syphilitic diseases, and occasionally
recommended as a preventative check;" however, she preferred "the
woman's retaining control by using the sponge" (304). The sponge was a
woman's protection from M althus' man of liberal education. At the same
time, it had the potential to provide working class women with a tangible
way of controlling their own bodies.
By 1877 the desire to provide contraceptives to the working poor had
developed into w hat is now called the birth control movement. In his book
Birth Control and the Population Question in England. Richard Soloway
illum inates the complicated web of factors which effected the organized
movement from its inception until World W ar I. The movement was
perpetually characterized by the"fears" and "anxieties" th at their motives
would be misconstrued as less than virtuous.
The birth control movement was p art of a broader concern with
improving the economic well-being and welfare of the lower classes
by inculcating such solid virtues as prudence, foresight, and self-
restraint. . . . The movement was also an extension of earlier
efforts, evident in tighter control over regulation and the drink
trade, to civilize the laboring poor and curtail their anim alistic and
violent tendencies, as the Victorians described them, (xvii)
Birth controllers sought strategies for arguing th at contraception would
serve the public good; promoting virtue as a way of civilizing the masses
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278
was a strategy th a t seemed to have had wide appeal. But, as Soloway
reports, this strategy had the opposite effect. Instead of tam ing society,
detractors thought th at distributing condoms to the masses would
encourage the immoral behavior th at virtue was poised to control.
Opposition, he writes, "was rooted not only in Victorian notions of propriety
but also in a fear of unbridled sexuality and the further loss of social control
if people, especially the poor were free to indulge their carnal appetites
without fear of the consequence"(xvii). The portrait Soloway paints of the
Victorian fear of anim alistic masses, "responsible for drunkenness, crime,
random violence, and vice" developed into a prim ary justification for the
science of eugenics developed in the late nineteenth century by Francis
Galton. Galton's science was founded on the belief th at one could regulate
hum an reproduction in order to improve the biological characteristics of
hum anity. In her biography of M argaret Sanger, Ellen Chesler suggests
th at eugenic science works on the principles developed by Darwin and
Mendel during the latter part of the nineteenth century. She writes: "If, as
Darwin said first and Mendel then confirmed, only the fittest were to
survive, surely it was in society's best interest to improve the quality of
humans" (122). Eugenics, she continues, had a large intellectual following
in Europe and America well into the 1930s. It was endorsed by progressives
who made the assum ption th a t "hereditarian principles were compatible
with a commitment to egalitarianism and social welfare initiatives in
education, health and labor." These same progressives, she writes, had a
"naive confidence in the possibility of doing good through the rational
application of medical and scientific advances to human life" (122).
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279
Helping the working poor to regulate their own fertility was the
im petus for early birth control advocates. Problematically, this same
im petus was used by eugenic scientists trying to weed out the anim alistic
characteristics of the working poor. Eugenic science worked on the
assum ption th at the number of births itself did not need to be controlled, but
the type of children bom had to be regulated. Consequently, birth control
advocates were continually working around the accusation of practicing
eugenics.5 Annie Besant, M arie Stopes and M argaret Sanger were each
accused of practicing eugenics because th eir birth control activism was
aimed at women of the working and im m igrant classes. Ironically,
however, many eugenicists were against birth control because of the stigma
it carried. While their practice was a "science," the women who advocated
birth control were suggesting immoral practices which, as Soloway
indicated, would only decrease the ability of the upper classes to control the
poor. Besant and Sanger, however, had another program in mind. Both
women agreed th at contraception should be the right of women, and th a t
women should be the moral decision m akers when it came to m atters of
• ’This accusation became much more pointed after Nazism . Chester is right to
acknowledge that discussions of eugenics are forever made difficult by the fact that Nazi
Germany enforced strict eugenic practices to weed out undesirable members of society.
H itler's policies included forced sterilization to prevent undesirables from having
children. Forced sterilization was in practice in the United States until the m id-twentieth
century. Both instances make it difficult to recapture the sense of progress espoused by
intellectuals who believed that they were helping society by controlling the fertility of the
im m igrant and lower classes. C hesler writes: "For M argaret, World War II sim ply
confirmed the failure of progressive reformers like herself who had tried for so long to
stim ulate interest in peaceful, scientific principles o f planning for control o f population,
natural resources, and economic growth" (397). Chesler does not ally Sanger too closely
with the more negative side of eugenic practices, but she does suggest that before WWII
Sanger used the discourse o f eugenics and accepted money from eugenic organizations,
such as the Neo-M althusians, to support her efforts. For a variety of perspectives
concerning the effect of eugenics on new reproductive technologies see Ruth A. Chadwick's
collection Ethics. Reproduction and Genetic Control (London and New York: Croom
Helm, 1987).
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280
reproduction. A more conscientious practice of reproduction would
invigorate the institution of motherhood, thereby creating a "race"
(Sanger's term) of mothers better able to care for their children.6
The language of population control and eugenics brought
contraceptive discourses into the public realm. Problematically, one aim of
this discourse was to control or tam e the monstrous, working-class family.
At the same time, explicit use was made of contraceptive language and
devices to aid women in controlling their own fertility. Chesler argues th at
"eugenicists were largely responsible for having introduced explicitly
sexual topics into the boundaries of acceptable scientific discourse" (123).
In turn, from M althus to Besant, "science" enabled public discussions of
contraception. These discussions eventually led to the m aterial devices
used by women to regulate reproduction. The m aterial for tam ing the
monstrous family, for better or worse, was publicly available. By the late
nineteenth century, virtue, modesty and propriety--the stuff of genteel
novels-had been transform ed into the condom, diaphragm and
contraceptive sponge.
C o n t r a c e p t i o n a n d f e m a l e d e s i r e
I began this project by suggesting th a t female authors m anipulated
prophylactic discourses to negotiate and liberate female desires. It has
dan ger's use of the term "race" to describe the new breed of mothers is one of the
reasons why she was accused of eugenic practices. However, Chesler is careful to suggest
that Sanger deplored Nazi eugenics; she thought of her birth control program as more
empowering and benevolent (for women in particular), and tried in later years to separate
herself from groups who adhered to a "unmitigated defense of property, privilege, and race
baiting in its most conventional sense" (215). For an extended discussion and analysis of
this problem see Chesler's Woman of Valor (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1992),
especially chapter 10.
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281
been my contention th at women w riters were able to construct their
prophylactic plots in part because of the increasing availability and
effectiveness of contraception, and th a t these new narratives enabled a
liberation of female sexuality. Female authors exploited the availability of
real contraceptives to construct th eir prophylactic plots. While Mary
W ollstonecraft suggested th at women use propriety to hide the fulfillment of
sexual pleasure, Eliza Haywood, Mary Shelley and H arriet M artineau all
made reference to more tangible forms of contraception th at could free
female desire from the yoke of social censure. I have argued th a t birth
control (in its literal and figurative configurations) effectively erases the
visual link between consummated sexual pleasure and reproductive
product. As a result, it has the potential literally and literarily to license
women's sexual passions. Even though each of the w riters dealt w ith in
this study had very different reasons for constructing their prophylactic
plots, they seem to come to an implicit agreem ent about the importance of
female bodies. All of them, including M ary Toft, intim ate th a t women's
bodies belong to women themselves, not to social prescription, medical
doctrine, scientific experimentation or m ale-centered ideals about female
virtue, chastity and modesty. They implicitly stake women's claim to
sexual and textual liberation.
This liberation, however, has its consequences. Even though
contraception might have enabled women to move more freely both in the
fictional and non-fictional world, women were continually read and judged
by restrictive standards for female behavior. A heroine might exercise self-
control and passionately pursue her own course, but her actions, gestures
and countenance were always subject to social disapprobation. When a
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282
woman, such as the Mary Wollstonecraft depicted in Godwin's M emoirs,
did not conform to specific socially-authorized scripts, her actions were
interpreted as affronts to decency. And, if a heroine like Frances Burney's
Elinor could not be educated to modesty and virtue, her gestures toward
self-control were frustrated by social ostracism. As I argued in chapter
two, when a woman tried to control her own desires, she was often
interpreted as being out of control; women's reason was continually
frustrated by too much passion.
The final chapters of Eliot's The Mill on the Floss dram atically
illustrate the most pessimistic consequences of female passion. By the end
of the novel, Stephen has confessed his love for Maggie even though they
both know th a t he is implicitly engaged to her cousin Lucy. Maggie does
not want to fall victim to this tem ptation— her passion— because she knows
that it is improper. Even though she loves Stephen, she pleads with him to
keep his promise to Lucy, explaining why she cannot be with him: "I m ust
not, I cannot, seek my own happiness by sacrificing others. Love is
natural; but surely pity and faithfulness and memory are n atural too. And
they would live in me still, and punish me if I did not obey them. I should
be haunted by the suffering I had caused. Our love would be poisoned.
Don't urge me; help m e-help me, because I love you" (450). Against
Maggie's wishes Stephen contrives to be alone with her in a boat on the
river. At first she refuses, but carried along by her passions, they embark.
The scene is sexually charged, an illicit excursion. Stephen proposes th at
they never return, "til no one can part us— til we are married," but because
of his prior attachm ent Maggie knows this is an impossibility (465). He
carries the adventure to dangerous extremes by rowing so far out into the
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283
tide th at there is no way for them to return. Stephen forces Maggie into an
impossible position from which her reputation cannot escape. She is
furious and accuses him of deception: "You have wanted to deprive me of
any choice. You knew we were come too far-you have dared to take
advantage of my thoughtlessness. It is unm anly to bring me into such a
position" (466).
By the time they return to St. Ogg's, days later and unm arried, the
damage has been done. Maggie is totally discredited--her honor and
reputation irreparably compromised. Her indiscretion is characterized as
a contagious disease: "It was hoped th at she would go out of the
neighbourhood— to America, or anywhere— so as to purify the air of St Ogg's
from the tain t of her presence, extremely dangerous to daughters there!"
(492). Even though Maggie proclaims her innocence, no one will listen.
Public opinion accuses Maggie of "unwomanly boldness and unbridled
passion," while Stephen is excused as an innocent victim "very much at the
mercy of a designing bold girl" (491). Because the village misreads the
excursion, no one is able to see th at in refusing Stephen, Maggie denies her
own passions. Public opinion assumes th a t these passions have already
been consummated. They read the visible proof: th at Maggie went,
unescorted, with her cousin's betrothed. There can be no conclusion other
than the assumed fact th at Maggie lost her virtue. Within the world of St
Ogg's, her actions can be read in no other way. Her strength and
conviction are erased by social assum ption. Finally, Maggie's death
relegates her to a time before desire. Consumed by the flood th at destroys
the mill, she and her brother, from whom she has been estranged, are
finally reunited: "brother and sister had gone down in an embrace never to
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284
be parted: living through again in one suprem e moment the days when
they had clasped their little hands in love and roamed the daisied fields
together" (521). Tom and Maggie are returned to innocence, a state
unblemished by the tincture of sexuality. Their eternal embrace consumes
Maggie's passions, erases her sexuality and silences her desires.
Eliot implies th at Maggie finds liberation only in death— in the total
denial of sexuality. This is an image th at fem inist critics cannot afford to
ignore because it represents one of the boundaries of sexual freedom. Even
though she steadfastly refuses Stephen and acts honorably towards her
cousin Lucy, the St Ogg's community is sure th a t Maggie has explicitly
crossed the border of propriety. The self-control she exercises in refusing
Stephen is figured as a lack of control. In other words, Maggie limits her
own feelings, but she cannot, in the end, manage other's perceptions of her
desires. This blindness of interpretation articulates a specific way of
reading the dilemma of female longing: desire can always be rescripted by
social decorum, resituated into more conventional plots. Consequently, an
author's most outrageous narrative gestures are always in danger of being
contained and limited by the conservative pressures exerted on the text by
the wider social space it would represent and of which it is a part. W hether
or not she resists her desires, Maggie can only be a fallen woman in Eliot's
fictional community of St Ogg's.
This is not to claim that all novels are contained by social
prescription. I would not want to argue th a t Burney, Eliot or Shelley could
be made into agents of social conservatism. However, I do want to suggest
th at the texts examined in this study offered women sexuality and birth
control at a price: death, dissimulation, desire enabled by the bodies of
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285
other women or facilitated by invoking the working-class body. The means
to and results of sexual desire posit an am bivalent relationship between
women and sexual liberation precisely because choosing to exercise sexual
passion, to use birth control or even to write a novel does not take place
beyond social convention. All of these choices are defined by social
relationships th a t can both liberate and lim it simultaneously. For
example, a novel's social context limits self-control a t the very same time
th at it posits the possibility for sexual freedoms. Similarly, birth control
might obliterate the m ark of consummated sexuality— liberating women
from social convention— while sim ultaneously m isrepresenting women as
always available for male pleasure. If we recall Mandeville's proposal for
public stews or de Sade's narrative of a woman's initiation to sexual
libertinage-both of which intim ate th a t women should be available to
satiate male desire— we find th a t sexual freedom is an ambiguous privilege.
The availability of birth control does not free women from gender-
specific, culturally-constructed discourses about our bodies and our real or
imagined abilities. However, prophylactic politics make it possible to
imagine different narratives of female desire. Indeed, part of the project of
this study has been to determine how successfully women have negotiated
social pressures to experience their own pleasures. By m anipulating
decorum, altering the readable signs of propriety, mocking the medical and
scientific professions and speaking overtly about contraception, women
w riters politicized the interchange between their radical plots and the
pressures of social convention. Their texts are p art of the dialogue that
forms culture-they are both subject to social pressure and constitutive of
cultural practices— and their fictional m anipulations cannot neatly be
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folded into narratives of social conformity precisely because they
continually challenge and rewrite these narratives.
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Asset Metadata

Creator Silverman, Debra (author)

Core Title Prophylactic practices: Contraception and the construction of female desire from Eliza Haywood to George Eliot

Degree Doctor of Philosophy

Degree Program English

Degree Conferral Date 1995-08

Publisher Los Angeles, California (original), University of Southern California (original), University of Southern California. Libraries (digital)

Tag english,Literature,OAI-PMH Harvest

Format theses (aat)

Language English

Contributor Digitized by ProQuest (provenance)

Advisor Modleski, Tania (committee chair), Kamuf, Peggy (committee member), Manning, Peter J. (committee member)

Permanent Link (DOI) https://doi.org/10.25549/usctheses-oUC11257903

Unique identifier UC11257903

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Legacy Identifier DP23202

Dmrecord 244548

Document Type Dissertation

Format theses (aat)

Rights Silverman, Debra

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Type texts

Source University of Southern California (contributing entity), University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses (collection)

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