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Birthing the Nation: Sex, Science, and the Conception of Eighteenth-Century Britons

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In her recently published monograph, Lisa Forman Cody explores the intersection of two seemingly distinct eighteenth century phenomena; the assent of the male midwife and scientists as authorities over birth and reproduction, and the formation of a British national identity. Examining the period from 1660 to 1830, Cody contends that the transformations which made reproduction a public and masculine topic also supported new Enlightenment ideals of individual and community identity. She argues that "representations of sex, pregnancy, and birth practices could help to constitute other sorts of concepts and identities in addition to gender, and . . . offered a natural set of categories through which eighteenth-century Britons could imagine their own identities and those of others" (p. 4). Yet, while reproduction was used to demarcate organic differences between gender, class, religious, and racial identities, the figure of the male midwife was accepted as a scientific authority because he represented a paradoxical amalgamation of both male and female gender traits. He embodied male Enlightenment rationality and objectivity, using scientific knowledge to deliver babies, while also possessing empathetic compassion for the laboring female body giving birth. This is in slight opposition to Thomas Laquer's argument that the eighteenth century saw the emergence of incommensurable sexual difference, whereby males and females became considered physically and mentally appositional.

Cody's monograph is organized chronologically and thematically, while methodologically she is influenced by both Foucaultian theories of sexuality and discourse analysis, as well as feminist theory. As the turn of the eighteenth century approached, pregnancy and birth were considered to be private feminine domains regulated by female midwives. Birth was an experience inaccessible to male understanding, and female midwives maintained their authority over reproductive practice based on professions of subjective experience - as women they had (or could) experience birth and therefore knew what was best for reproducing mothers. As Cody writes, "They - and not men - possessed this special authority so long as there remained an underlying assumption that knowledge of the body and birth derived from feeling and gendered experience" (p. 45). During this time there were few male midwives, the most notable being the Chamberlen family of surgeons in London. Male midwives tended to be called only in cases of emergency, and male midwife practice grew out of the ancient medical field of gynecology, concerned with infertility, miscarriage, and female emotionality.

However, the early modern patriarchal state and social model engendered that questions of paternity and illegitimacy were of significant economic and political importance. Since female midwives were authorities of reproductive practice, they were called on to testify in cases of paternity and infanticide, often with significant social consequences. As objective rationality, empirical observation, and the discovery of natural laws were increasingly valued by the natural philosophers of the seventeenth century, reproductive knowledge came to represent a sphere of mystery which engendered political and cultural anxieties about midwives and they lying-in birth process. Midwives and birthing mothers were seen as women outside of patriarchal control, able to engage in deception with political significance. Contemporaries commented on subterfuge reproductive practices and monstrous births, linking such disturbances to Catholics and threats to patriarchal authority.

As the natural scientists enquired into reproductive process into the eighteenth century, they made scientific inroads into a territory of knowledge and practice considered to be feminine and private. They were often met with public criticism and satire, depicted paradoxically as both lecherous men attempting to gain unregulated access to female bodies or effeminate doctors engaging in traditional female activities. Yet, Cody argues that while these scientific men did not initially "conquer the female reproductive body . . . they did very effectively open up the categories of sex and reproduction as public topics, fit for scientific exploration more broadly" (p. 119).

By the mid-1750s, male midwives were becoming increasingly common in Britain, especially among middling and elite families. Cody argues that as these men employed enlightened reason and objectivity to justify their authority over the reproductive process, they constructed new images of motherhood which depicted women as emotional, weak, and vulnerable. Although medical men dismissed the early modern belief that the maternal imagination could transform unborn children into monstrous beings, such as in the 1726 case of Mary Toft who supposedly gave birth to nearly twenty rabbits, they did depict the female mind as weak and passionate. This claim of emotional subjectivity functioned to justify rational man-midwife authority over birth; as women, female midwives were unable to objectively oversee the birthing process in order to do what was best for mother, child, and the state. At the same time, reproduction took on a greater political significance - foreign beliefs in monstrous births signified incivility and superstitious religious identity.

Cody traces the emergence of a specifically British discipline of male midwifery. The majority of male midwives during the eighteenth century were from Scotland because obstetrics was one of the only medical professions that allowed the possibility of advancement without an elite surgical background due to its marginal medical status. Because of their borderland status, they acted as diplomats during child labor. They transversed the borders of gender identity, employing both male objective scientific reason while showing female emotion and sympathy for pregnant mothers. This argument is particularly insightful, and shows how the Scottish "celtic fringe" was intimately involved in the project of constructing a truley British form of man-midwifery.

In the second half of the eighteenth century, reproductive knowledge and became increasingly linked to political and imperial pejoratives of the British government. Cody contends that the revolution in America was viewed by commentators sympathetic to the colonial cause as an example of unnatural and illegitimate British rule. This was often depicted in images that escaped censorship by the unnatural male pregnancy of George III. Sex and reproduction became the dominant metaphor used to represent political authority and national identity. Indeed, reproductive biology became central to taxonomic categorization of race and species of animals and humans. Birth practices and distinctions between female reproductive anatomies were used to distinguish between women of different nations and races. Britons increasingly viewed the other as monstrously sexed, in relation to their own appropriately gendered identity.

This increased discussion of reproductive difference engendered concerns about British population and sexuality in the late eighteenth century. Reproduction and population became matters of state intervention and surveillance due to fears of economic decline engendered by unproductive overpopulation, resulting in poor law reform. At the same time, the 1834 Poor Laws defined the double standard of sexuality for nineteenth century Britons, whereby unwed mothers were determined responsible to for illegitimate children and male sexuality escaped state regulation.

Overall, Cody's monograph is well written and researched. As she argues, the emergence of male midwives was part of the historical narrative by which sexuality came to be defined as a problem of public importance requiring increased surveillance and policing. Although the research concerning the intersection of gender and national identity during the Victorian era is dense, the period under consideration by Cody is relatively understudied. Her book is of great significance to those interested in changing conceptions of gender during the eighteenth century, and helps to shed light on the emergence of Victorian definitions of proper sexuality and gender identity in the 1830s. Similarly, she intelligently shows how gender and sexuality are central to modern conceptions of national identity and racial difference.