Motherhood

Abstract

Motherhood in the Victorian period was idealized, considered women's noblest and highest calling. Mothers were thought to possess a special moral authority that uniquely qualified them to stay at home and raise children. Although the maternal ideal was used to regulate women's lives, Victorian literature often focuses on mothers who do not meet the ideal, featuring transgressive mothers. Maternal transgression includes unwed mothers with illegitimate children as well as mothers who commit infanticide. Victorian mothers were not only represented in literature; they also produced it. Victorian women writers discovered how to exploit the social power of maternal authority in order to expand beyond the domestic sphere not only by working as professional poets, novelists, and periodical editors but also by using maternity as a source of creative inspiration. Ultimately, despite the broad and seemingly coercive implications of maternal ideology, Victorian maternal experience in both literature and real life was often wide‐ranging and diverse.