The female-dominated medical discipline of midwifery in Shakespeare's day led to male-dominated tales of female incompetence and physiological obfuscation. In this study Caroline Bicks shows how Shakespeare pointed to a history of the discipline in which women wielded considerable power.
'Caroline Bicks deftly weaves together history, literature, medicine and theology to explore early modern anxieties about midwives' many roles. This book provides a rich new slant on early modern midwives, as keepers, shapers and critics of femininity and masculinity.' Dr. Helen King, Reader in the History of Classical Medicine, University of Reading 'Caroline Bicks's thorough and wide-ranging exploration of the cultural contexts of pregnancy and childbearing in Shakespeare's Britain makes for a fascinating, provocative read.' Professor Elaine Hobby, author of Virtue of Necessity: English Women's Writing 1649-1688 and Professor of Seventeenth-Century Studies, Loughborough University 'The book is broad in scope, treating an impressive array of English and Continental texts. Bicks is especially strong when tracing the cultural paradigms that defined and delimited early modern midwives, in their time and the present.' ChoiceReviews '...a compelling and thoughtful exploration...Bicks offers a well-researched and thoughtful exposition of the midwife's importance to cultural production. She clearly and at times brilliantly elucidates the midwife's participation in subject formation.' Shakespeare Quarterly '... wide-ranging and compelling... a fascinating and important study... a welcome addition to the field of early modern cultural studies, and it should be considered required reading for scholars interested in the history of early modern women.' Albion 'Caroline Bicks has crafted a generous synthesis of pre-modern writings and current scholarship treating of midwives and, more broadly, women members of the birthroom community... Her study will be useful to scholars coming from literary studies, cultural history, and history of the family... one of the gifts of this book is that its interlay of medical with Shakespearean passages allows us to read the latter for the most fleeting iridescent nuances and implications.' Clio '... illuminating analyses of midwifery
