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Pregnancy and Childbirth

In Victorian Society

"What you say of the pride of giving life to an immortal soul us very fine, dear, but I own I cannot enter into that; I think much more of our being like a cow or a dog at such moments."

-Queen Victoria in a letter to her daughter, Vicky

DEAREST CHILD: LETTERS BETWEEN QUEEN VICTORIA AND THE PRINCESS ROYAL PREVIOUSLY UNPUBLISHED", edited & copyrighted by Roger Fulford 1964, 1992.

Image source: blog.londonconnection.com

Childbirth

The Dangers of Childbirth

Works Cited

  • Began with female midwives

  • Women had control (Brodsky, Lewis)

  • Became more male as it became more medicalized (Brodsky, Lewis)

  • Anesthesia introduced 1847 by James Young Simpson (Caton)

  • Controversy--Meids (Caton)

Abrams, Lynn. "The Ideals of Womanhood in Victorian Britain."

BBC History Trails:Victorian Britain. (2001): n. page. Web. 4 Mar. 2013.<http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/trail/victorian_britain/women_home/ideals_womanhood_01.shtml>.

Brodsky, Phyllis. The Control of Childbirth: Women Versus

Medicine Through the Ages.First. Jefferson: McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers, 2008. Print.

Caton, M.D., Donald. What a Blessing She Had Chloroform: The

Medical and Social Response to the Pain of Childbirth from 1800 to the Present. 1st Ed. New Haven and London: Yale University

Lewis, Judith Schneid. In the Family Way : Childbearing in the

British Aristocracy,1760-1860. New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 1986. Print.

Sullivan, Stephanie. "Victorian Motherhood." . University of

Florida. Web. 25 Mar 2013. <http://www.clas.ufl.edu/users/agunn/teaching/enl3251/vf/pres/sullivan.htm>.

Wojtczak, Helena. "Pregnancy and Childbirth." VictorianWeb.

2000.<http://www.victorianweb.org/gender/wojtczak/pregnancy.html>.

  • Especially dangerous for poor women

  • Puerperal fever or "bed-fever"

  • Male practitioners rarely washed hands

  • No knowledge of bacteria/microorganisms

  • First Division of Great Free Vienna Lying-in Hospital
  • Maternal deaths 3x greater than in Second Division
  • Ignaz Semmelweis introduced hand-washing in March 1847

  • Other dangers:
  • obstructed labor
  • hemorrhage
  • Convulsions
  • failed anesthesia

Attitudes toward Pregnant Women

For Rich Women

For Poor Women

  • Aristocratic women rewarded for sons (Lewis)

  • Confinement: lasted through the Christening (Lewis)

  • Access to anesthesia (Caton)

  • Often had an "Accoucheur," a high-end male midwife

  • "Lying-ins" at home (Lewis)

  • Safer (Brodsky)
  • Lying-in Hospitals

  • Male attendants

  • Unsanitary conditions

  • More children
  • (Brodsky, Sullivan)

The Ideal Mother

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  • pregnancy both a source of pride and shame, depending on class (Wojtczak)

  • Biological aspects considered indecent (Lewis)

  • Poor women expected to continue working (Sullivan)

  • Aristocratic women made public appearances (Lewis)
  • Idealized motherhood
  • "sweet vocation"
  • Sole source of female fulfillment

  • Breastfeeding more popular, especially among middle class

  • Mother should be emotionally invested in her children (Abrams)

  • Average woman had five living children from eight or more pregnancies (Wojtczak)

What it Meant to be a Woman

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  • separate spheres
  • Wife and mother
  • Queen Victoria was the model "Mother of the Nation"
  • Motherhood and Childbirth almost inevitable, lest one become "redundant"
  • (Abrams 2)

From the Obituary of Mrs. Frances Goodby:

'... her ardent and unceasing flow of spirits, extreme activity and diligence, her punctuality, uprightness and remarkable frugality, combined with a firm reliance on God ... carried her through the severest times of pressure, both with credit and respectability ...' (The General Baptist Repository and Missionary Observer, 1840).

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