Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction Naturally bad or dangerously good: Romantic-period mothers “on trial”
- 1 Revolutions in mothering: theory and practice
- 2 A love too thick: Gothic mothers and monstrous sympathies
- 3 The Irish wet nurse: Edgeworth's Ennui
- 4 Infanticide in an age of enlightenment: Scott's The Heart of Midlothian
- 5 The case of the Shelleys: maternal sympathy and The Cenci
- Postscript
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
- CAMBRIDGE STUDIES IN ROMANTICISM
3 - The Irish wet nurse: Edgeworth's Ennui
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 22 September 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction Naturally bad or dangerously good: Romantic-period mothers “on trial”
- 1 Revolutions in mothering: theory and practice
- 2 A love too thick: Gothic mothers and monstrous sympathies
- 3 The Irish wet nurse: Edgeworth's Ennui
- 4 Infanticide in an age of enlightenment: Scott's The Heart of Midlothian
- 5 The case of the Shelleys: maternal sympathy and The Cenci
- Postscript
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
- CAMBRIDGE STUDIES IN ROMANTICISM
Summary
Was she bad? Was she worse than the general run of her race? No. They had an unfair show in the battle of life, and they held it no sin to take military advantage of the enemy – in a small way; in a small way, but not in a large one.
Mark Twain, Pudd'nhead WilsonIt is also good to speak while feeding a child, so that it does not experience feeding as a violent force-feeding, as a rape.
Luce Irigaray, “The Bodily Encounter with the Mother”“We once told a good-hearted but extravagant cook,” writes Isabella Beeton, in her phenomenally popular nineteenth-century Everyday Cookery and Housekeeping Book,
that we should much like to give her carte blanche in cooking details, but that if we did so and spent all the housekeeping money on eating and drinking, we should be unable to do what we have always done – give the maids good medical advice when they were ill, pay for their medicine, and give them wine if ordered by the doctor. Her only reply was “Lor, mum!” but a speedy change took place, and she remained a careful, faithful woman, until her marriage.
Beeton's anecdote speaks to a widespread concern for late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century homemakers: one's extravagance might point to a “good heart,” but it also frequently indicates imprudence, as unguarded generosity may deplete the resources upon which others depend.
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- Information
- Romanticism, Maternity, and the Body Politic , pp. 96 - 121Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2003