“Modern neurotic women” and the pains of childbirth: staging medicalized maternity in Sophie Treadwell’s Machinal

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article positions Sophie Treadwell’s depiction of maternity and hospital-based childbirth in Machinal (1928) as a crucial though underexplored dimension of the expressionistic play’s feminist social critique. Our argument focuses on the fourth of nine episodes, “Maternal,” and reads the protagonist’s traumatic postpartum experience alongside and in the context of contemporary media, medical, and literary publications that articulate emerging concerns about childbirth, maternity, and obstetric care. We illustrate how characters’ responses to the Young Woman’s intense distress resonate with a prevalent medical trend to either dismiss women’s anxieties about the risks and pain associated with childbirth or diagnose them as symptoms of modern women’s “weakness” or “nervous exhaustion.” Treadwell stages an argument that at once affirms the legitimacy of women’s potential fears and challenges the notion of mental-uplift as a panacea for maternal anxiety. Furthermore, through the scene’s medical figures and sonic backdrop, she presents a scathing portrait of institutionalized obstetric care. This scene reinforces the broader critique of modern, patriarchal hierarchies and their embeddedness in technological discourses that runs throughout Machinal. The postpartum scenario offers a unique vantage point to expose how intimate and institutional structures combine in ways both physically and psychologically damaging to women.