Graduation Semester and Year
Spring 2024
Document Type
Thesis
Degree Name
Master of Arts in English
Department
English
First Advisor
Amy Tigner
Second Advisor
Desiree Henderson
Third Advisor
Cedrick May
Abstract
Stomach and Womb examines the recipes from early modern obstetrical treatises and midwifery manuals, revealing an ontology of parturiency that winds through the concurrent Shakespearean plays, Twelfth Night and The Winter’s Tale. Gynecological and obstetrical texts from the era detail how pregnant women were to order themselves after conception with utmost concern for their diet, governing the outputs of their bodies by managing the inputs, the foods they ingested before, during, and after pregnancy and childbirth. Further, the associated images of the stomach and the womb during this time present an essential link between foodways and a construct of femininity that has heretofore been understudied. This thesis shows the ambivalent yet prevailing understanding of reproductive authorities that believed women to be passively and inherently maternal, while exposing anxieties about women’s powers over reproduction, namely in the agency and autonomy of eating. From diverse pregnancy cravings to purging medicines used in the midst of labor and delivery to the postpartum prescriptive recipes both alimentary and topical, this thesis argues that understanding the physiological and fundamental transitions of the early modern perinatal woman relies on also knowing what she consumed.
Keywords
Early modern, Shakespeare, Recipes, Pregnancy, Birth, Childbirth
Disciplines
Literature in English, British Isles | Renaissance Studies | Women's Studies
License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Recommended Citation
Beacham, Grace E., "Stomach and Womb: Early Modern Recipes for the Perinatal Woman" (2024). English Theses. 1.
https://mavmatrix.uta.edu/english_theses/1
Included in
Literature in English, British Isles Commons, Renaissance Studies Commons, Women's Studies Commons