Born To Procreate: Women and Childbirth in France from the Middle Ages to the Eighteenth Century by Rolande Graves (review)

Book Reviews1 3 1 Part Two is equally rich. If the 1990s fiction of Francophone women writers living in France is involved with transnational and bicultural issues (Cazenave); twenty-first century French women's novels focus on "raw" explorations ofthe body (Cusset); women's poetry is more than ever "out in the world" (Etienne); women's visual and performance art centers on "renegotiat[ing] the materiality and the boundaries of the body" (Chadwick, 112); and, theater engages with diverse forms of boundary transgression (Cixous), it is in film that French women have effected the most visible changes. By "hybridizing" genres, contesting artistic hierarchies, and opening up female roles (Sellier), and by portraying women who violently exercise their sexuality and subjectivity, as epitomized in the works ofCatherine Breillat (Gillain), women are defying cinematic conventions and "reappropriat[ing] a feminine realm in which soul and body are no longer split from one another" (Gillain, 240). All the essays in this section also provide excellent bibliographies and filmographies. Lastly, favorable (Badinter) and scathing (Scott) critiques of Mona Ozouf's controversial Les Mots des femmes, along with Ozouf's response, together with an analysis ofthe totalizing strategies that demonizeAmerican-style feminism as "Other" to "the construct of French internal coherence" underlying nationalist discourse (Mathy), point up trans-Atlantic ideological conflicts regarding the nature of feminist historical inquiry and relations between the sexes. The concluding (and longest) essay (Moses) probes the discrepancy between the narrow theoretical "French feminism" American academics— mostly literary critics drawn to philosophical and psychoanalytic inquiry—"constructed " in the 1970s and the full range of material and empirical problems French women were (and are) in reality struggling with. I have one quibble: the essays within each section are arranged alphabetically by author, with the result that the topics keep changing as one reads. It is therefore hard to sustain a comparison of differing approaches to the same issue. In another vein, as the editors themselves note in the post-script to their introduction, "real-time" events (such as the forceful emergence ofthe right and far-right in the 2002 French elections) sometimes outstrip even the most current cultural assessments. Nonetheless, this does not in any way diminish the usefulness of this book. The overall quality of the essays is superb, making Beyond French Feminisms an intellectual and pedagogical resource that will serve us for a long time to come. Elissa GelfandMount Holyoke College Rolande Graves. Born to procreate: Women and Childbirth in France from the Middle Ages to the Eighteenth Century. New York: Peter Lang Publishing, 2001. Pp 162. ISBN: 0-8204-4907-5. $49.95. In Born to Procreate, Graves lays out the history ofmidwifery and the development ofobstetric medicine from medieval times through the eighteenth century. The book begins with an overview of scientific knowledge during the Middle 132Women in French Studies Ages. While medical doctors published numerous treatises on the female anatomy, beliefs stemming from superstition and the Church continued to override rational explanations for reproduction: "To these theories must be added the philosophical debates on the power or influence of God and the stars on the sperm at the time of conception" (27). Other common beliefs included the notion of menstruation as a necessary purification of the body; or that menstruation was a means to shed the overabundance of blood in the woman's body. Such perceptions continued to pervade the scientific realm for centuries to come. Graves traces the evolution of obstetrical manuals, including those written by sages femmes. Ambroise Paré, cited as one of the more influential doctors, published manuals which provide extensive information from his own experience with parturient women. They also describe and attempt to explain the occurrence of deformed babies, stillbirths and common complications of childbirth. Here too, superstition underlies the explanations of unusual births: "Paré recommends that women not look at monstrous things during intercourse or prior the 'formation' ofthe baby. . . . Twisted hands or feet, humps or other deformities are the direct result of the bad habits of the mother. . ." such as wearing clothes that are too tight (56). Because knowledge regarding reproduction remained largely unchanged from the Middle Ages through the sixteenth century, pregnant women were often treated based on misinformation...