Stepping Out of the Womb: Women and the Politics of Reproduction

Birthing babies seems a mundane event. Yet even a scant review of the history of reproduction suggests just how laden with complexity and politics this most basic of human functions has become. It is therefore unsurprising that, as Foucault has written, the body has provided an outline for the interpretation of historical knowledge and for ordering the world around us.¹ What we understand about bodies shapes our personal decisions, including our choice to give virtual strangers—in other words, doctors—access to them. The authoritative voice of physicians and hygienists has profoundly altered perceptions of women’s bodies and men’s relationships to them.

This changing body knowledge about women—in particular, their experiences with conception, pregnancy, and childbirth—frames Mary Fissell’s analysis in Vernacular Bodies: The Politics of Reproduction in Early Modern England. Women and men of the early modern era did not have access to modern technologies telling them far more than they could imagine possible about their fetuses. This dearth of information may have had its benefits, but it also meant that reproduction remained shrouded in mystery.

Fissell makes a bold case for “mapping” women’s bodies in order to explain how such knowledge influenced gender relations and the status of women in early modern England. She also provides us with a sobering account of how male figures (hygienists, physicians, and religious leaders), who may have had little actual experience in obstetrics, gradually chipped away at the authority of often seasoned female midwives in the birthing process.

I confess to being a fan of cheap print. So it took little convincing for me to embrace Fissell’s emphasis on “vernacular knowledge as a cultural artefact in its own right” (6). Fissell’s reliance on popular literature belies a complex understanding of gender relations, however. The turbulent politics of the Reformation and the Civil War redefined the dynamics between women and men even as it upheld political patriarchy. The expansion of the print medium and the publication of “home-grown books” explain just how this transformation took place among England’s reading public.

Fissell unfurls her analysis with a discussion of the ways in which the public circulated stories about the Virgin Mary’s conception, pregnancy, and birth. Fissell tracks the objects associated with Mary’s birthing of Christ, relics to which ordinary women attached meaning and significance in order to insure a safe delivery. Yet, as Fissell acknowledges, “Mary was both unlike them (in not suffering in giving birth) and like them (in suffering those pains, albeit under unusual circumstances)” (22). Although it was difficult to emulate Mary, English women nonetheless prayed to her seeking intercession for a healthy labor and delivery.

In studying the popular tales associated with the birth of Christ, Fissell also documents dissenting voices. The Lollards, for example, undermined Mary’s function in the story of conception, contending that she served merely as a conduit that birthed Christ. One preacher even doubted Mary’s role as mother, claiming that her body could not have produced the milk needed to nourish Christ since she had only borne him at the tender age of fourteen. These accounts remind us that religious stories were not devoid of controversy, especially when a woman such as Mary held a featured role in originating and propagating the faith. In the process, we are also reminded of how religious stories surrounding such major figures as the Virgin Mary and Jesus Christ evolved to fit the social realities of succeeding generations.

As childbirth ceased to be associated with the spiritual and sanctified example of the Virgin Mary, sensationalist accounts appeared in the popular literature that shattered the idealized images of English family life. Instead, witchcraft, magic, and the dark side of humanity took center stage. The womb, no longer a sacred site, could thus be construed a progenitor of evil. As such, the womb was both a powerful and a dangerous body part. One physician, Edward Jorden, linked the womb with key organs such as the heart and liver and strove to show how “faulty wombs” even had the potential to...