Emotions and Reproduction in Early Modern England

This paper examines the complex emotional landscape surrounding reproduction in early modern England, challenging traditional binary interpretations of gendered experiences. Drawing on medical texts, personal correspondence, diaries, and literary sources, it demonstrates how emotions related to conception, pregnancy, and childbirth were deeply embedded in social, cultural, and power dynamics rather than being purely biological experiences. While authoritative medical discourses attempted to regulate feminine emotional embodiment by categorizing feelings as either acceptable or pathological, actual practices reveal a more nuanced reality. The research expands beyond women's experiences to examine men's emotional engagement with reproduction, revealing how reproductive processes impacted entire families and communities. Factors such as social status, geographic location, and family networks profoundly shaped individuals' emotional experiences and their ability to navigate reproductive challenges. Within patriarchal constraints, women exercised agency by strategically managing their emotional expressions to achieve personal goals. By examining how emotional scripts were both reinforced and resisted through medical practices and personal narratives, this paper argues that reproduction served as a site where personal agency, social expectations, and cultural norms were constantly negotiated. This analysis challenges monolithic assumptions about historical attitudes towards reproduction and reveals the diversity of emotional experiences in early modern England. 

Yishu Wang is a fourth-year PhD student at the University of Exeter. Her doctoral thesis focuses on Tudor lay medical practices regarding reproduction and how reproductive bodies and reproduction are constructed, interpreted and utilised in multiple power dynamics.