BEYOND THE REPRODUCTIVE BODY: POLITICS OF WOMEN'S HEALTH & WORK IN EARLY VICTORIAN ENGLAND
Appealing to audiences interested in the histories of medicine, women, gender, labor, and social policy, Beyond the Reproductive Body examines women's health in relation to work in early Victorian England. Government officials and reformers investigating the laboring population became convinced that the female body would be ruined by gainful employment, making women incapable of reproducing a healthy labor force. Women's work was thus framed as a public health "problem." Poor women were caught between the contradictory expectations of the reproductive body, which supposedly precluded any but domestic labor, and the able body, which dictated that all poor but healthy people must work to stay independent of state assistance. Medical case narratives of female patients show that while official pronouncements emphasized the physical limitations of the female reproductive body, poor women adopted an able-bodied norm. Beyond the Reproductive Body demonstrates the centrality of gender and the body in the formation of Victorian policies concerning employment, public health, and welfare. Focusing on poor women, it challenges historians' customary presentations of Victorian women's delicate health. The medical case narratives give voices to poor women, who have left very few written records of their own. Marjorie Levine-Clark is assistant professor of history at the University of Colorado, Denver.
1123329343
BEYOND THE REPRODUCTIVE BODY: POLITICS OF WOMEN'S HEALTH & WORK IN EARLY VICTORIAN ENGLAND
Appealing to audiences interested in the histories of medicine, women, gender, labor, and social policy, Beyond the Reproductive Body examines women's health in relation to work in early Victorian England. Government officials and reformers investigating the laboring population became convinced that the female body would be ruined by gainful employment, making women incapable of reproducing a healthy labor force. Women's work was thus framed as a public health "problem." Poor women were caught between the contradictory expectations of the reproductive body, which supposedly precluded any but domestic labor, and the able body, which dictated that all poor but healthy people must work to stay independent of state assistance. Medical case narratives of female patients show that while official pronouncements emphasized the physical limitations of the female reproductive body, poor women adopted an able-bodied norm. Beyond the Reproductive Body demonstrates the centrality of gender and the body in the formation of Victorian policies concerning employment, public health, and welfare. Focusing on poor women, it challenges historians' customary presentations of Victorian women's delicate health. The medical case narratives give voices to poor women, who have left very few written records of their own. Marjorie Levine-Clark is assistant professor of history at the University of Colorado, Denver.
49.95 In Stock
BEYOND THE REPRODUCTIVE BODY: POLITICS OF WOMEN'S HEALTH & WORK IN EARLY VICTORIAN ENGLAND

BEYOND THE REPRODUCTIVE BODY: POLITICS OF WOMEN'S HEALTH & WORK IN EARLY VICTORIAN ENGLAND

by MARJORIE LEVINE-CLARK
BEYOND THE REPRODUCTIVE BODY: POLITICS OF WOMEN'S HEALTH & WORK IN EARLY VICTORIAN ENGLAND

BEYOND THE REPRODUCTIVE BODY: POLITICS OF WOMEN'S HEALTH & WORK IN EARLY VICTORIAN ENGLAND

by MARJORIE LEVINE-CLARK

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Overview

Appealing to audiences interested in the histories of medicine, women, gender, labor, and social policy, Beyond the Reproductive Body examines women's health in relation to work in early Victorian England. Government officials and reformers investigating the laboring population became convinced that the female body would be ruined by gainful employment, making women incapable of reproducing a healthy labor force. Women's work was thus framed as a public health "problem." Poor women were caught between the contradictory expectations of the reproductive body, which supposedly precluded any but domestic labor, and the able body, which dictated that all poor but healthy people must work to stay independent of state assistance. Medical case narratives of female patients show that while official pronouncements emphasized the physical limitations of the female reproductive body, poor women adopted an able-bodied norm. Beyond the Reproductive Body demonstrates the centrality of gender and the body in the formation of Victorian policies concerning employment, public health, and welfare. Focusing on poor women, it challenges historians' customary presentations of Victorian women's delicate health. The medical case narratives give voices to poor women, who have left very few written records of their own. Marjorie Levine-Clark is assistant professor of history at the University of Colorado, Denver.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780814251225
Publisher: Ohio State University Press
Publication date: 03/03/2004
Series: WOMEN & HEALTH C&S PERSPECTIVE
Edition description: 1
Pages: 256
Product dimensions: (w) x (h) x 0.70(d)

Table of Contents

Acknowledgmentsix
Introduction1
Part 1Contested Body Politics: Women, Health, and Social Reform in the 1830s and 1840s13
1.The Reproductive Body, Part I: Women's Work and The Biology of Reproduction17
2.The Reproductive Body, Part II: The Tasks of Social Reproduction36
3.Gender, the Poor Law, and the Ambiguity of the Able-Bodied Worker57
Part 2Living in the Body: Women's Experiences of Health and Illness73
4.The Evidence of the Body: Poor Women and Medical Cultures77
5.Testing the Reproductive Hypothesis: Women's Illnesses, the Environment, and Menstruation96
6.Health and the Material Conditions of Home: Sanitation, Poverty, and Domesticity118
7."Rather a Hard Life": Domestic Relationships and Health at Home131
8."She Continued at Her Work": Negotiating Employment and Health150
Conclusion: The Politics of Women's Health and Work176
Notes185
Select Bibliography229
Index249
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