Ritual and Conflict: The Social Relations of Childbirth in Early Modern England, by Adrian Wilson

Abstract

Adrian Wilson provides a comprehensive and critical historiographical survey of gender in early modern England. He seeks to resituate childbirth within the broader social and cultural milieu of life at this time. Principally, he challenges historians’ notions of gender relations and problematises the idea of patriarchy. He poses questions about our understanding of illegitimate births, marriage and male ‘superiority’ in the early modern period—suggesting possible avenues of research—and highlights the amount of investigation still required of scholars in this field. In order to reassess the place of childbirth in English society, Wilson tackles a series of different issues and topics. He begins with the argument that ‘bastard bearing’ was a hazard common to all early modern women. It was not, as has sometimes been suggested, the result of a deviant bastard-prone subculture. Rather, rates of illegitimacy reveal tensions and dislocations in the processes of courtship and marriage, and tensions between popular tolerance of bastard-bearing and the views of authorities who sought to surround the practice with ideas of shame. Although this chapter is largely based upon secondary material, Wilson’s argument is persuasive.