Sexual subjectivities of British mothers, 1840-1939

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My research explores the lived experience(s) of pregnancy between 1918 and 1945, as well as how these experiences were translated into discourse. I am interested in the tensions between how pregnancy was portrayed in didactic texts, such as medical literature and advice manuals, and in women's own accounts of their pregnancies, as can be found in letters, diaries, and other first-person sources. What did it feel like-physically, emotionally, sexually, spiritually, and otherwise- to be pregnant in this time period? How were these feelings expressed in words, and by whom?My project relies heavily on letters written to Dr Marie Stopes, the Scottish botanist and sex reformer who was among Britain's birth control pioneers. Her books, most notably Married Love (1918) and Radiant Motherhood (1920), were smash hits, and for decades her readers wrote to her with their questions about sex, marriage, contraception, pregnancy, childrearing, and more. Whilst these letters have been studied in the context of, for example, the history of birth control, masculinity, and marital relationships, they have thus far been overlooked in the study of pregnancy, and it is here that my research will intervene.My work also makes use of several Mass Observation diaries dating from the Second World War. The history of pregnancy during wartime has been severely under-studied, and I aim to fill this lacuna using valuable first-hand testimony from diarists who were pregnant between 1939 and 1945, including the renowned Scottish novelist Naomi Mitchison. An almost-unknown 1942 'autobiography of motherhood' by the journalist Ann Vasta, which recounts her 1941 experience of conception, pregnancy, and birth, rounds out my corpus for this period.Fiction and poetry are also crucial sources for my thesis. Elizabeth Cambridge's semi-autobiographical 1933 novel Hostages to Fortune depicts a country doctor's young wife in her journey through-and occasional ambivalence towards-motherhood in straitened circumstances, whilst Enid Bagnold's 1938 The Squire follows an aristocratic middle-aged mother through the final days of her fifth pregnancy. Vera Brittain's 1936 novel Honourable Estate becomes almost a polemic in its dramatic and highly politicised depiction of three generations of twentieth-century mothers. Additionally, two previously undiscovered poems by the Derbyshire poet Teresa Hooley offer a tender and lyrical glimpse into the emotions she experienced during her pregnancy in 1924.To date, I have presented portions of my thesis work at the Maternal Bodies Symposium (University of Birmingham, June 2023); the International Association for Maternal Action and Scholarship annual conference (Boston University, June 2024); and the Social History Society annual conference (Durham University, July 2024). My supervisors are Professor Matt Houlbrook and Dr Anne Hanley.