Perceptions of Pregnancy from the Seventeenth to the Twentieth Century

Abstract

As discussed in the previous chapter with regard to the play The Birth of Merlin, the performance of pregnancy is a trope which is well-used in dramatic works. As Kathryn M. Moncrief has noted, 'In Shakespeare's plays alone, from the unfortunate Jacquenetta to the groaning Juliet, from Helena to Hermione, Tamora to Thaisa, teeming women are numerous'. 1 Scholarship on this topic has shown that there are a number of thematic ways that pregnancy is used within the plot of a play. 2 Pregnant characters are used to explore issues such as infidelity, concealed pregnancy, female duplicity, and unmarried pregnancy, for example. 3 All these themes have a common thread founded in a distrust of women and the secrets their bodies can conceal: as Laura Gowing has put it, 'the pregnant belly remained in many ways an opaque mystery', and this mystery allows other discourses to gain momentum. 4 As late as the end of the eighteenth century (and indeed in all times before modern stenography), as Joanne Begiato shows in her chapter in this volume, pregnancy could be perceived as hosting an 'invisible stranger' within the woman's body, the true nature of whom would only be revealed at birth. In relation to pregnant fictional characters, Susan Wiseman has suggested that the best way to gain the most full understanding of a theatrical text, and therefore the implications of the presentation of a pregnant character, is to compare 'the play with other texts in a similar field' with the view that 'evidence from texts in a similar field help to illuminate the script of the play' because without explanation from 1 Kathryn M. Moncrief, 'Show me a child of thy body which I am father to': Pregnancy, Paternity and the