Abstract
The epilogue briefly summarises the development of the discourse after the eighteenth century. Buckley ends with an evaluation of the way that the eighteenth-century constellation of ideas concerning maternal imagination continues to hold implications for on-going ideas concerning gender, pregnancy and creativity in the twenty-first century. The epilogue points to recent debates concerning pregnant women and alcohol, smoking, drug abuse, and even diet, to demonstrate the way that modern society’s assiduous emphasis on prenatal care resonates with a much older discourse of maternal imagination and moral responsibility.
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Notes
- 1.
The exception is drama, where mention of maternal imagination quietly dies, perhaps due to the sensitive implications of female performance outlined in Chapter 2.
- 2.
The villain of Hoffman’s story is obsessed with jewels due to his mother’s fascination with them in pregnancy; Scott’s novel attributes James I’s aversion to swords to an episode where his pregnant mother is threatened; in Hawthorne’s short story Georgiana’s small red facial birthmark has discursive links to the red fruit birthmarks discussed in (Anti-)Imaginationist treatises; the heroine of Elsie Venner is like a snake as her mother was terrified by one while pregnant.
- 3.
Wilson views this same recommendation regarding Mozart with more suspicion and argues that while the mother’s actions may lead to benefits for the foetus, by implication her lack of action can have detrimental effects; see my Chapter 1.
- 4.
Toni Morrison’s Sula (1973) might also fit into this category as the eponymous character has a birthmark that is interpreted differently by various characters. There is also some suggestion that Sula’s unconventional life is in some way related to her family’s maternal tradition of transgressive women.
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Buckley, J. (2017). Afterbirth: The Discourse of Maternal Imagination After the Eighteenth Century. In: Gender, Pregnancy and Power in Eighteenth-Century Literature. Palgrave Studies in Literature, Science and Medicine. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-53835-8_7
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