Dangerous Motherhood

Hilary Marland, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004. Pp. 320. £52.50 (hbk). ISBN 1–4039–2038–9. In Dangerous Motherhood, Hilary Marland explores ‘puerperal insanity’, the mental disorder associated with pregnancy and childbirth in the Victorian era, through a ‘sad collection’ (p. 140) of asylum and hospital case notes, the medical notes of individual physicians, diaries and letters, and medical writings, mostly though not exclusively drawn from the 1830s to the 1870s. The result is a highly interesting and rich piece of historical research which engages successfully with a number of scholarly debates currently shaping histories of medicine and, in particular, histories of female insanity and institutional confinement. For instance, Marland resumes the conversation about Victorian gender roles and female madness prompted some years ago by Elaine Showalter, both challenging and reinforcing the importance of her work. She also explores recent findings by historians interested in the relationships between families and asylum committal; the function of medical diagnoses in the nineteenth century; the utility of asylum case notes for social and cultural histories of insanity; and the medico-legal debates around the insanity defence in nineteenth-century courtrooms and in the public sphere

Childbirth · Conversation · Criminology · Insanity · Political science · Pregnancy · Psychoanalysis · Sociology · Historical Economic and Social Studies · Historical Psychiatry and Medical Practices · Historical Studies on Reproduction, Gender, Health, and Societal Changes · Psychology · Gender Studies · History · Law