Introduction: Navigating the cult of motherhood in the emerging public sphere -- Speaking for herself: privilege and creating counterpublics. Staging motherhood: Sarah Siddons and Mary Robinson -- Mother-midwife: women's work and the phenomenon of birth -- Spoken for: mediated maternity and the politics of exclusion. Compulsory maternity: gender nonconformity in the military memoirs of Christian Davies and Hannah Snell -- Abortive attempts: forced labor and the impossibility of motherhood in The history of Mary Prince: a West Indian slave -- Spoken about: marginalized maternities -- Street life: picturing mothers practicing itinerant trades -- Mother Magdalen: penitential poverty and the prostitute-mother -- Afterword: The twenty-first-century afterlives of Enlightenment maternity
Summary
"Laboring Mothers merges and expands on two feminist dialogues to create a novel transatlantic cultural history of eighteenth-century working motherhood. Addressing both historical women and representations of a "type," the book demonstrates how ideas about the public sphere and maternity interacted to create systems of power and privilege among working mothers"-- Provided by publisher
Bibliography
Includes bibliographical references and index
Notes
Description based on online resource; title from digital title page (viewed on November 10, 2023)
