This books examines the trials and errors of Romantic-period mothers, the politicizing of maternal bodies and the maternalizing of political bodies, the authoring of mothers and the mothering of texts. Julie Kipp views Romantic writers’ treatments of motherhood and maternal bodies through the lens of the legal, medical, educational, and socioeconomic debates about motherhood so popular during the period, discussions that rendered the physical processes associated with mothering matters of national importance. Widespread interest in the workings of the maternal body tended to make public the privately shared space signified by the womb or the maternal breast, both of which evidenced for writers of the period the radical exposure of mother and child to one another - for good or ill. Kipp’s primary concern is to trace ways that writers deployed representations of mother-child bonds variously as a means to naturalize, endorse, and critique Enlightenment constructions of interpersonal and intercultural relations. Learn More / Buy Now

Tags: Womens Maternity