Birthing-Room Narratives: The English Midwife and Her Entrance into Academia, 1649-1688
Abstract
Medical practitioners in seventeenth century England came in many different forms,
from herbal hawkers to apothecaries to barber-surgeons and physicians. Midwives occupied
a special role within this complex cast of characters, as the only group of practitioners
dominated by women. Working within the birthing room, midwives determined patrilineage
through declaring births legitimate or illegitimate. In a patriarchal kingdom, this
power determined property rights and often, the very throne of England. As informally
educated practitioners, midwives drew their authority from observing more experienced
midwives, attending successful deliveries, and even delivering their own children.
Formally university-educated practitioners such as male physicians attempted to co-opt
the power of the birthing-room through an absorption of reproductive health knowledge
into the male academic sphere, a place where this knowledge had never been before.
Rather than passively allowing a male intrusion, some midwives entered academia themselves
to publish treatises valuing experiential knowledge over the hypothetical knowledge
touted by physicians, who never attended childbirths. This thesis analyzes the ways
in which midwives, despite the prevalent gender-based stereotype of their ignorance,
disseminated their own reproductive health knowledge in academia while simultaneously
adapting their responses to the social and political context of 1600s England.
Type
Honors thesisDepartment
HistorySubject
MidwivesMidwifery
Jane Sharp
Elizabeth Cellier
Alice Culpeper
17th century English gender politics
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https://hdl.handle.net/10161/16672Citation
Wang, Carrie (2018). Birthing-Room Narratives: The English Midwife and Her Entrance into Academia, 1649-1688.
Honors thesis, Duke University. Retrieved from https://hdl.handle.net/10161/16672.Collections
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