"The Luxurious Daughters of Artificial Life": Female "Delicacy" and Pain in Late-Victorian Advice Literature.
The second half of the 19th century marked the rise of obstetrics as a legitimate physician-dominated medical specialty. In this period of transition, distanced from traditional cultures of social childbirth but not yet embracing hospital deliveries, many middle-class North American women turned to prescriptive literature to fill a crucial gap. In the medical advice they directed at young wives and expectant mothers, physicians consistently emphasized the middle-class woman's heightened sensitivity to the pain of giving birth, relying on arguments that resonated with the class, gender, and racial tensions of the late-Victorian period while consistently reaffirming physicians' expanding authority.
Department of History, Wilfrid Laurier University.
Whitney
W
Wood
D005260:Female; D049672:History, 19th Century; D006801:Humans; D009774:Obstetrics / Q000266:history*; D010146:Pain; D036801:Parturition; D010820:Physicians; D011247:Pregnancy
Douleur; advice literature; childbirth; documentation de conseil; naissance; obstetrics; obstétrique; pain; sensibilité; sensitivity