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Overview
At the intersections of early modern literature and history, Shakespeare and Women's Studies, Midwiving Subjects explores how Shakespearean drama and contemporary medical, religious and popular texts figured the midwife as a central producer of the body's cultural markers. In addition to attending most Englishwomen's births and testifying to their in extremis confessions about paternity, the midwife allegedly controlled the size of one's tongue and genitals at birth and was obligated to perform virginity exams, impotence tests and emergency baptisms. The signs of purity and masculinity, paternity and salvation were inherently open to interpretation, yet early modern culture authorized midwives to generate and announce them. Midwiving Subjects, then, challenges recent studies that read the midwife as a woman whose power was limited to a marginal and unruly birthroom community and instead uncovers the midwife's foundational role, not only in the rituals of reproduction, but in the process of cultural production itself.Synopsis
Bicks (English, Boston College) examines how Shakespearean drama and contemporary medical, religious, and popular texts figured the midwife as a central producer of the body's cultural markers. In addition to attending most Englishwomen's births and testifying to their paternity confessions, midwives were said to control aspects of the infant's physiognomy and performed virginity exams, impotence tests, and emergency baptisms. Bicks explains how the midwife thus played a vital role not only in the rituals of reproduction but in the process of cultural production itself. Annotation ©2003 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR