| This thesis analyzes the literary emergence of maternity as an ideological tool for reform in France during the latter half of the eighteenth-century. As women participated increasingly in intellectual life, the question of woman came to preoccupy French society. Her place in the natural and social order was defined over the course of the century as a function of ideological currents stemming from Enlightenment discourse and, subsequently, from a desire to renew the concept of female domesticity. The Enlightenment philosophical tension between science and myth was reflected in writings on the physiological and mechanical aspects of pregnancy. At the same time, fears of depopulation ascribed to pregnancy particular importance, as women were assigned the role of reproducing in order to rectify this illusory problem. Reacting to women's increasing activity in the public sphere in the last third of the century, their male counterparts promoted the ideal of motherhood as a moral duty limiting women to the private sphere. Women themselves expressed varying feelings towards these roles that had been defined for them, and while some embraced maternity as women's vocation, many others struggled to formulate their own vision of the relationship between the female identity and reproduction. |
