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Palgrave Macmillan

Pregnancy and the Novel

Representation and Concealment from Richardson to Hardy

  • Book
  • Open Access
  • Jan 2025
  • Latest edition

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Overview

Authors:
  1. Tracy Brain

    1. Bath, United Kingdom

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  • Explores why some canonical 18th- and 19th-century novelists avoided writing about pregnancy and birth

  • Examines how the new science of obstetrics affected literary form

  • Engages with a range of canonical novels alongside a diverse range of 18th- and 19th- century medical texts

  • This book is open access, which means that you have free and unlimited access.

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Keywords

About this book

Pregnancy and the Novel is a study of covert representations of pregnancy and birth in canonical eighteenth- and nineteenth-century novels. The research draws on medical texts to illuminate the ways that novelists simultaneously hide and reveal problematic pregnancies and births. Grounded in narrative theory and historicism, it reveals a reciprocal influence between literature and science through the novels of Samuel Richardson, the Brontës, George Eliot, Dickens and Hardy. This project is an act of literary detective work that will uncover what can easily be missed by twenty-first century readers, bringing it into light by reconstructing historical knowledge of reproductive medicine.

This is an open access book.

Authors and Affiliations

  • Bath, United Kingdom

    Tracy Brain

About the author

Tracy Brain is Professor of Creative Writing and English Literature at Bath Spa University, UK.

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