"To Take Pleasant Walks Together," scene from "Mr. Doleful's Six Reasons; Or, What He Got Married For," Frank Leslie's Lady's Magazine, December 1867.
Motherhood Writ Large:
Transgressive Maternity and American Poular Print, 1768-1868
“Motherhood Writ Large” examines the figure of the transgressive mother in American print culture from the 1760s to the 1860s. It was in this period that a modern notion of idealized motherhood took shape in didactic and prescriptive literature, which inundated women with advice on how to birth and raise their children, and which touted “proper” motherhood as a social necessity crucial for the moral development and strength of the young nation. Yet popular contemporary texts also made clear that women who appeared to transgress the limits of acceptable maternity were highly visible – and that their varying representations in print both informed and unsettled attitudes towards gender and the family. This study argues that the general public was well aware that many women either could not or would not adhere to idealized demands, and that this awareness betrayed a widespread preoccupation with maternity and deviance. That preoccupation, in turn, not only helped shape the cultural and legal norms and regulations that controlled women’s bodies and actions, but also reinforced differential conceptions of womanhood based on class, religion, and race, with whole categories of women being defined as outside the bounds of acceptable maternity. While most scholarship has focused on the ways in which the reification of motherhood that began in the late eighteenth century worked to elevate women’s status in the United States, this project insists on both a greater complexity of public opinion and a more convoluted legacy of its effects. These varied depictions of mothers as less than ideal, in turn, contributed significantly to society’s efforts to discipline and subjugate women.