BODIES AT ODDS: THE MATERNAL BODY AS LIVED EXPERIENCE AND CULTURAL ...

335 Pages·2013·1.93 MB·English

by  Nora Doyle

BODIES AT ODDS: THE MATERNAL BODY AS LIVED EXPERIENCE AND
CULTURAL EXPRESSION IN AMERICA, 1750-1850

Nora Doyle

A dissertation submitted to the faculty of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the
Department of History.

Chapel Hill
2013

Approved By:
Kathleen DuVal
Jacquelyn Dowd Hall
John F. Kasson
Joy S. Kasson
Heather A. Williams
©2013
Nora Doyle
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
ii
ABSTRACT

NORA DOYLE: Bodies at Odds: The Maternal Body as Lived Experience and Cultural
Expression in America, 1750-1850
(Under the direction of Jacquelyn Dowd Hall)

Between the 1750s and the 1850s American society saw the emergence of a new
ideology that defined motherhood as women’s primary role. This project shows that
central to this vision was an evolving understanding of how women’s bodies were
supposed to look, act, and feel as mothers. I argue that cultural representations of the
maternal body increasingly sought to refine the body—or even make it disappear
entirely—in order to project an idealized vision of sentimental motherhood. Over time
these cultural representations became invested in assumptions about race and class,
defining the ideal mother as white and middle-class. Yet cultural definitions of the ideal
mother bore little resemblance to the ways in which women experienced the physical
challenges of childbearing and childrearing. I argue that women consistently contested
prevailing cultural ideals by perceiving their identity as mothers to be fundamentally
defined by the work of their bodies. Moreover, in their emphasis on the physical work of
childbearing, women revealed a deep-seated ambivalence toward motherhood that
contrasted markedly with predominant cultural ideals. Women’s articulations of
embodiment pose a challenge to the current periodization of the history of motherhood by
showing that women’s own perceptions changed relatively little, revealing the history of
motherhood in this period to be a story of continuity as well as change over time.

iii
In loving memory of my grandmother,
Ruth Peterson Doyle (1918-2012)

iv
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The completion of this project has taught me above all else that our achievements
are truly collaborations with the people around us and with those who have come before
us. I have been so lucky as to share this journey with a number of extraordinary people.
Jacquelyn Hall has patiently followed this project every step of the way from its first
tentative iteration as a seminar paper to my final dithering over the conclusion. I will be
forever grateful for her careful reading of my work, for her timely words of
encouragement, and above all for her vision of the past and her elegant ability to
articulate it. I also owe particular thanks to Crystal Feimster who helped shape the early
stages of this project and whose unstinting encouragement and support helped me survive
the early years of graduate school. I am especially grateful to Kathleen DuVal who has
repeatedly rescued me from incoherence as I have attempted new arguments and new
chapters. Her clarity of thought has pushed me to be a better scholar and her good humor
and encouragement have made the process delightful. I certainly owe tremendous
gratitude to the most gracious, most thoughtful, and most delightful of all dissertation
committees—Kathleen DuVal, Jacquelyn Hall, John Kasson, Joy Kasson, and Heather
Williams. Without their kind and discerning comments this dissertation would be a lesser
thing.
I am also deeply grateful for the generous support of a number of institutions that
have made this research possible. My first foray into archival research was supported by
v
the Library Company of Philadelphia and the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, and I
thank their friendly and knowledgeable staff for starting me off on the right foot. The
Massachusetts Historical Society likewise provided invaluable research support and a
delightful environment in which to work. The completion of this project would not have
been possible without the support of the Graduate School of the University of North
Carolina, Chapel Hill, which provided a much needed semester for research and writing. I
am particularly grateful to the American Association of University Women for their
generous support of my final year of dissertation work. Last, but certainly not least, many
thanks are due to the UNC Department of History. I have received unstinting
encouragement from all of the faculty and staff and I am grateful for the teaching
opportunities and the research support I have received along the way.
This project has been a lifetime in the making. Looking back to my childhood, I
see that I am indebted to a dear friend, Pam Bailey, for setting me on this path. When I
was a child she gave me two old crackling yellowed paperback books: Little House in the
Big Woods and Little House on the Prairie. I read them voraciously again and again and
thus was born in me an abiding fascination with the history of women in America. My
interest and understanding, I sincerely hope, have become more sophisticated with time,
but I wish never to lose sight of the childish glee I felt in diving into the unfamiliar
realms of the past. I also owe great thanks to an early teacher, Pat Schmidt, who
encouraged my passion for history and, more importantly, taught me to write.
I would never have made it to graduate school without the extraordinary
education I received at Grinnell College, and I owe a great debt to each of the professors I
encountered there who challenged me to push the limits of my knowledge and
vi
understanding. Special thanks to Victoria Brown, George Drake, Jan Gross, David
Harrison, and Dan Kaiser, each of whom taught me invaluable lessons about the past and
about my own potential as a scholar. I am eternally grateful to my undergraduate history
advisor, Sarah Purcell, whose confidence in me never wavered and whose unmatched
enthusiasm and kindness helped to carry me along this path.
I owe a million thanks to the many friends who have sustained me along the way.
My fellow graduate students have provided a community of love and laughter and
encouragement. Special thanks to the Ladies of Pemberley—Rike Brühöfener, Rachel
Hynson, Anna Krome-Lukens, and Kim Kutz—who have made life uproariously fun and
have so often sustained me with good advice, good cheer, and good food. David Williard
has been a staunch and generous friend and has helped shape my scholarship in countless
ways. Zsolt and Karla Nagy have shared their friendship and their cats and been with me
through times both difficult and joyful. Hannah Fuhr has brightened my life with her
generosity and her infectious laugh. My lifelong friends, Emma Duer and Zoey Plaugher,
have shared their love and encouragement and dreams for the future. My special love and
gratitude to David Winski, a true friend and companion who graciously tolerates my
many historical tangents, helps me overcome the stresses of academia, and reminds me of
the things that are most important in life. Too many friends to name—both near and far—
have shared their love and support over the years and have patiently endured my elation
and despair throughout the various stages of research and writing. My thanks and love to
you all.
In this as in everything, my deepest gratitude goes to my family. My parents,
Mary Doyle and Steve Ostrem, have encouraged me in every endeavor and always carry
vii
me forward when my faith in myself fails. My sister, Eve Doyle, inspires me to laugh and
take myself less seriously; I am lucky to have such a friend. My grandparents, John and
Ruth Doyle and Fred and Helen Ostrem, have loved me unconditionally, frequently
reminded me to eat and sleep, and have inspired me with their extraordinary example. I
send out my eternal love and gratitude to all of you.

viii
TABLE OF CONTENTS

LIST OF FIGURES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . x

ABBREVIATIONS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xi

INTRODUCTION: In Search of the Maternal Body . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1

CHAPTERS

I. Living and Writing the Body: Childbearing Narratives, 1750-1850 . . . . . . . 31

II. The Tyrannical Womb and the Disappearing Mother:
Medical Constructions of the Female Reproductive Body . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93

III. “The Highest Pleasure of Which Woman’s Nature is Capable”:
Breastfeeding and the Eroticization of the Maternal Body . . . . . . . . . . . . . 150

IV. Good Mothers and Wet Nurses: Breastfeeding and the
Fracturing of the Sentimental Maternal Ideal . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 194

V. The Fantasy of the Transcendent Mother:
Bodies and Spirits in Nineteenth-Century Sentimental Poetry . . . . . . . . . . 233

CONCLUSION: Pursuing the Maternal Body: Past, Present, and Future . . . . . . . . . . . 279

BIBLIOGRAPHY. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 290
ix
LIST OF FIGURES

1.1 Portrait, Michael Zinman Photographic Album Collection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66

2.1 Jane Sharp, The Midwives Book (1671) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 106

2.2 William Hunter, Anatomy of the Human Gravid Uterus (1774), Table 2 . . . . . 116

2.3 William Hunter, Anatomy of the Human Gravid Uterus (1774), Table 4 . . . . . 116

2.4 James Hamilton, A Collection of Engravings (1796), Plate 4 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 121

2.5 William Hunter, Anatomy of the Human Gravid Uterus (1774), Table 8 . . . . . 122

4.1 “Portrait of an unidentified woman breastfeeding a baby” (c. 1848) . . . . . . . . 209

5.1 “The Empty Cradle,” Godey's Lady's Book (1847) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 258

5.2 "Maternal Instruction," Godey's Lady's Book (1845) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 260

5.3 “Views of Slavery” (c. 1836) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 272

x