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Confinement: The Hidden History of Maternal Bodies in Nineteenth-Century Britain
'An important, fascinating and frequently shocking read.'
- BERNARDINE EVARISTO, author of Girl, Woman, Other
Covering a fascinating period of population growth, high infant mortality and deep social inequality, rapid medical advances and pseudoscientific quackery, Confinement is the untold history of pregnancy and childbirth in Victorian Britain.
During the nineteenth century, having children was frequently viewed as a woman's central function and destiny – and yet the pregnant and postnatal body, as well as the birthing room, are almost entirely absent from the public conversation and written histories of the period. Confinement corrects this omission by exploring stories of pregnancy and motherhood across this period. Drawing on a range of contemporary sources, Jessica Cox charts the maternal experiences of women, examining fertility, pregnancy, miscarriage, childbirth, maternal mortality, unwanted pregnancies, infant loss, breastfeeding, and postnatal bodies and minds.
From the royal family to inhabitants of the workhouse, this absorbing history reveals what motherhood was truly like for the women of nineteenth-century Britain.
Covering a fascinating period of population growth, high infant mortality and deep social inequality, rapid medical advances and pseudoscientific quackery, Confinement is the untold history of pregnancy and childbirth in Victorian Britain.
During the nineteenth century, having children was frequently viewed as a woman's central function and destiny – and yet the pregnant and postnatal body, as well as the birthing room, are almost entirely absent from the public conversation and written histories of the period. Confinement corrects this omission by exploring stories of pregnancy and motherhood across this period. Drawing on a range of contemporary sources, Jessica Cox charts the maternal experiences of women, examining fertility, pregnancy, miscarriage, childbirth, maternal mortality, unwanted pregnancies, infant loss, breastfeeding, and postnatal bodies and minds.
From the royal family to inhabitants of the workhouse, this absorbing history reveals what motherhood was truly like for the women of nineteenth-century Britain.
- GenresNonfictionHistory
428 pages, Kindle Edition
Published June 8, 2023
16 people are currently reading
255 people want to read
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October 17, 2023Most people who have studied 19th-century Britain will be familiar with the stratospheric rise in the nation’s population in this period. Between 1801 and 1901, it grew from around 10.5 million to almost 37 million. This expansion is usually discussed in reference to industrialisation, urbanisation, politics, imperialism or public health. Only rarely, as Jessica Cox observes, is it considered from the point of view of the maternal labour behind it. As Cox writes, this extreme growth ‘represents millions of birthing women, many thousands of whom lost their lives in the process’. I am an historian of Victorian Britain and have cited those demographic figures numerous times. I have even published on the history of 19th-century maternity care. Even so, I hadn’t considered the population explosion in quite these terms.
In Confinement Cox attempts to take a mostly private, personal set of experiences – pregnancy, birth, early motherhood and breastfeeding – and render them subjects of historical importance. She isn’t the first historian to attempt such a task – generations of feminist historians have worked to uncover this ‘hidden’ history – but there are still substantial obstacles in the way. As Cox acknowledges, due to the varying availability of source material, she is more successful in investigating the maternal bodies of wealthy women than their poorer counterparts. This is partly because the tendency in the 19th century – in both visual sources and in text – was to conceal rather than celebrate pregnancy. The maternal body, Cox writes, is ‘almost invisible’ in most 19th-century accounts of female life, forcing her to make creative use of hospital archives, newspaper reports, medical journals, and court, census and parish records.
Read the rest of the review at HistoryToday.com.
Agnes Arnold-Forster’s book on nostalgia is forthcoming with Picador.
In Confinement Cox attempts to take a mostly private, personal set of experiences – pregnancy, birth, early motherhood and breastfeeding – and render them subjects of historical importance. She isn’t the first historian to attempt such a task – generations of feminist historians have worked to uncover this ‘hidden’ history – but there are still substantial obstacles in the way. As Cox acknowledges, due to the varying availability of source material, she is more successful in investigating the maternal bodies of wealthy women than their poorer counterparts. This is partly because the tendency in the 19th century – in both visual sources and in text – was to conceal rather than celebrate pregnancy. The maternal body, Cox writes, is ‘almost invisible’ in most 19th-century accounts of female life, forcing her to make creative use of hospital archives, newspaper reports, medical journals, and court, census and parish records.
Read the rest of the review at HistoryToday.com.
Agnes Arnold-Forster’s book on nostalgia is forthcoming with Picador.
July 27, 2023
Confinement - ‘the expectations to which women were subject in respect of motherhood; the restrictions placed on the pregnant, birthing, and lactating body; and the lack of opportunities to discuss and understand the experiences of pregnancy and childbirth.’
This book will have you feeling MANY emotions.
A lot of the time I felt angry and sad at what these women went through! It is tragic.
The stigma around pregnancy in the nineteenth century flabbergasted me.
‘It was ordained by the Almighty that wives should be fruitful and multiply, it is an unnatural state of things for a wife to be childless.’
These women had no choice or say in many things.
The message I got from this was, you must get pregnant, keep having babies, you don’t get a say, you don’t have an opinion, you can’t talk about what you went through, get on with it, more babies, more babies, more babies.
This is an interesting read that I highly recommend. It does have a lot of upsetting topics however such as child death, stillborn, miscarriage etc so it might not be for everyone.
‘When I got married I didn’t know where a baby can from. My mum told me nothing.’
This book will have you feeling MANY emotions.
A lot of the time I felt angry and sad at what these women went through! It is tragic.
The stigma around pregnancy in the nineteenth century flabbergasted me.
‘It was ordained by the Almighty that wives should be fruitful and multiply, it is an unnatural state of things for a wife to be childless.’
These women had no choice or say in many things.
The message I got from this was, you must get pregnant, keep having babies, you don’t get a say, you don’t have an opinion, you can’t talk about what you went through, get on with it, more babies, more babies, more babies.
This is an interesting read that I highly recommend. It does have a lot of upsetting topics however such as child death, stillborn, miscarriage etc so it might not be for everyone.
‘When I got married I didn’t know where a baby can from. My mum told me nothing.’
July 29, 2023
An interesting and informative read!
Cox does an admirable job constructing what little data and experiential accounts survives of maternity in the 19th century Britain into an enlightening, well-structured narrative written with great sensitivity.
Cox also does an excellent job analysing the scant first-hand accounts that exist of Victorian mothers’ experiences and reading between the lines in an attempt to fill these historical gaps.
The whole book was evidently extremely well-researched from start to finish, with copious footnotes, references and supporting sources scattered throughout - always an encouraging sign in a book with an historical subject matter!
Some pieces of information were repeated multiple times, sometimes even within the same page, and the comparisons to modern-day maternal experiences were, though mostly quite interesting, at times slightly heavy-handed and repetitious.
Overall, however, this was a fascinating read that sheds valuable light on a neglected aspect of post-industrialisation British history.
Cox does an admirable job constructing what little data and experiential accounts survives of maternity in the 19th century Britain into an enlightening, well-structured narrative written with great sensitivity.
Cox also does an excellent job analysing the scant first-hand accounts that exist of Victorian mothers’ experiences and reading between the lines in an attempt to fill these historical gaps.
The whole book was evidently extremely well-researched from start to finish, with copious footnotes, references and supporting sources scattered throughout - always an encouraging sign in a book with an historical subject matter!
Some pieces of information were repeated multiple times, sometimes even within the same page, and the comparisons to modern-day maternal experiences were, though mostly quite interesting, at times slightly heavy-handed and repetitious.
Overall, however, this was a fascinating read that sheds valuable light on a neglected aspect of post-industrialisation British history.
June 15, 2023
Really good, informative, interesting, well written. I like the comparisons with what happens today in Britain. I highly recommend the book, I enjoyed reading it.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews