Sexual subjectivities of British mothers, 1840-1939

我的研究探讨了1918年至1945年间怀孕的生活经历(S)，以及这些经历是如何转化为话语的。我感兴趣的是，在医学文献和建议手册等说教文本中描述怀孕的方式，与在信件、日记和其他第一人称来源中可以找到的女性自己对怀孕的描述之间的紧张关系。在这个时期怀孕的感觉是什么--身体上、情感上、性上、精神上和其他方面？这些感受是如何用文字表达的？是谁表达的？我的项目在很大程度上依赖于写给苏格兰植物学家和性改革者玛丽·斯托普斯博士的信件，她是英国节育的先驱之一。她的书，最著名的是《结婚的爱》(1918年)和《光辉的母亲》(1920年)，轰动一时，几十年来，她的读者写信给她，询问他们关于性、婚姻、避孕、怀孕、育儿等方面的问题。虽然这些信件已经在节育、男子气概和婚姻关系的历史背景下进行了研究，但到目前为止，它们在怀孕研究中被忽视了，正是在这里，我的研究将介入。我的工作还利用了几本来自第二次世界大战的大规模观察日记。人们对战时怀孕的历史研究严重不足，我的目标是利用1939年至1945年期间怀孕的日记作者宝贵的第一手证词来填补这一空白，其中包括著名的苏格兰小说家内奥米·米奇森。记者安·瓦斯塔在1942年写的一本几乎不为人所知的《母亲自传》，讲述了她1941年怀孕、怀孕和分娩的经历，完善了我这一时期的语料库。小说和诗歌也是我论文的重要来源。伊丽莎白·剑桥1933年的半自传体小说《命运的人质》讲述了一位乡村医生的年轻妻子在艰难的环境中经历母亲的旅程--偶尔也是矛盾的--而伊妮德·巴格诺德的1938年的《乡绅》讲述了一位贵族中年母亲在第五次怀孕的最后几天的故事。维拉·布里坦1936年的小说《尊贵的庄园》对二十世纪三代母亲的戏剧性和高度政治化的描绘几乎成为了一场争论。此外，德比郡诗人特蕾莎·胡利(Teresa Hooley)之前未被发现的两首诗，让我们温柔而抒情地一瞥了她在1924年怀孕期间的情感。到目前为止，我已经在母体研讨会(伯明翰大学，2023年6月)、国际母亲行动与奖学金协会年会(波士顿大学，2024年6月)和社会历史学会年会(达勒姆大学，2024年7月)上展示了我论文工作的一部分。我的导师是马特·霍尔布鲁克教授和安妮·汉利博士。

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.