Unusual Frontal Developments: Negotiating the Pregnant Body in Nineteenth-Century America

This article explores women’s writings about their pregnant bodies in nineteenth-century America. In an attempt to move beyond the simplistic models of “pregnancy as illness” and “pregnancy as fetal containment,” this study explores how women discussed displaying their visibly pregnant bodies in public, kept track of their weights, and described what was growing inside of their expanding bodies. As legal restrictions upon fertility control increased and women’s roles narrowed to an intense focus on mothering, women’s descriptions of their bodies and what was residing inside them reveal a remarkable variety and fluidity in interpretations of pregnancy. Analyzing the corporeal experience of pregnancy in the nineteenth century alters our understanding of the history of body quantification, the complex process of fetal personification, and the policing of pregnant bodies, while it also forces us to confront our modern view of pregnancy and its connections to bodily control and reproductive ability.