Pregnant Women’s Sexuality in Early Modern England

"Pregnant Women’s Sexuality in Early Modern England fills a significant gap in the history of sexuality. This highly compelling short study pays attention to female sexual desire and its expression at a time when perceptions of impending motherhood eclipse considerations of such desire. Donaghy persuasively argues that shifts in thinking about female sexuality in the eighteenth century, influenced by a range of broader social changes, also led to changes in the way female sexual desires during pregnancy were conceptualised. Pregnant Women’s Sexuality in Early Modern England makes an important contribution to not only the study of sexuality but also our understanding of ideas about and attitudes towards the pregnant body more generally in the early modern period and eighteenth century". — Sarah Toulalan, Professor of Early Modern History, University of Exeter, UK.

Pregnant women in the past had sex, yet we know nearly nothing about their sexual desires, or what people thought about sex during pregnancy. While there is much research on the sexual maternal body, studies of pregnancy and sex are lacking. This book provides the first history of pregnant women’s sexuality in England from 1550 to 1800, with discussion of Northern European perspectives on pregnancy sex. It explores a range of medical literature for descriptions of pregnancy and sexuality, including popular medical and midwifery books, as well as Latin scientific treatises. Alongside these texts, it considers popular culture materials including novels, ballads, pornography, marital guides, and diaries and correspondence. Drawing on methodologies from gender and queer history, the book attempts to locate pregnant women’s articulations of desire in this period. Moreover, the book reveals the paradoxical nature of early modern attitudes to sex and pregnancy: women’s gravid sexuality was portrayed as natural and desirable, but also excessive, potentially dangerous and disruptive to the foetus.

 Paige Donaghy is a McKenzie Postdoctoral Fellow in the School of Historical and Philosophical Studies at The University of Melbourne. She is a historian of reproduction, medicine, and gender and sexuality in Europe ca.1550-1850.