Blood, Bodies and Families in Early Modern England (review)

Of the seven chapters in this book, five have been published previously, from 1981 to 1994, and two have been newly written for this volume. It says a great deal for Professor Crawford's innovative work on Early Modern bodies and families that the earlier papers do not appear dated. In her Introduction Crawford situates these chapters within her own and the discipline's growing understanding of women's history and literacy in the past two decades.

The strength of this volume is its commitment to primary sources. An awareness of the relevant contemporary theories of and studies on Early Modern bodies and families is always signalled, but Crawford then dives into the archives, drawing her conclusions from a wide array of sources, both published and unpublished, whether diaries, letters, treatises, or legal documents. Particularly evident is her desire to recover the words of seventeenth-century women, although she acknowledges in her Introduction that this privileges the more literate. Each chapter is informed by gender as a category of analysis, and the Introduction provides a useful discussion of the meaning and application of gender to Early Modern texts. Each chapter delves deeply into its subject matter, providing a richly textured view into seventeenth-century English society, thought, and experience.

The first chapter, 'Attitudes to Menstruation in Seventeenth-Century England', is also the earliest, first published in 1981 (the Appendix first published in 1978). Here Crawford investigates the competing physiological theories of menstruation in Early Modern England. Particularly interesting are men's diary references to the menstruation of their partners, which give a more personal insight into male reactions to women's bodies than is otherwise found. Equally fascinating are the references Crawford uncovers by women themselves to their menstruation patterns, and one feels for Sarah Savage, whose menstrual diary is published as an Appendix to this chapter, in which she sadly records her failure to achieve pregnancy.

'Sexual Knowledge in England, 1500-1750' (first published 1994) discusses the intersections between medical and theological views of sexuality in Early Modern England. Crawford outlines the tensions over ownership of and access to information on sexuality, particularly the move from Latin manuscripts to more widely disseminated printed and translated versions, which had implications for potential female readership. Crawford then investigates what popular knowledge of sexuality might have entailed, and how this might differ for women and men, in the sources accessed (written, Latin, oral) and the kind of knowledge provided. Considering the education and role of midwives, Crawford posits that many Early Modern women's knowledge of sexuality would have come from a female culture of experience and observation which remains largely silent in the records.

'The Construction and Experience of Maternity in Seventeenth-Century England' (first published 1990) considers whether the 'ideology of motherhood' in Early Modern England subordinated or empowered women. Crawford surveys contemporary theories of pregnancy, birth, lactation, and child-rearing, but then uncovers how women themselves reacted to these, using women's published and unpublished writings including diaries, letters, autobiographies, and commonplace books. Here she finds 'a female world' of support and advice networks and female-authored midwifery texts that allowed women to inform each other about their bodies. Nevertheless, Crawford also finds divergences in attitudes to motherhood among women, dependent on 'social level, family situation, economic circumstances and religious beliefs'. Overall, however, she contends that 'Maternity gave women knowledge', and that 'Maternal authority could be used beyond the household to justify intervention in the wider world' (p. 102).

'Blood and Paternity', newly written for this volume, is Crawford's most political chapter and begins and ends by drawing comparisons between seventeenth-century constructions of fatherhood and our own focus on DNA as sole predictor of paternity. The focus on blood, as in family lineage, leads Crawford to consider Early Modern men's desire for children. This introduces a discussion of inheritance and the legal and social problems of determining the legitimacy (read paternity...