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Full text release has been delayed at the author's request until May 10, 2026

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Reading Con(tra)ceptions: Women, Abortion, and Reproductive Health in Victorian Literature and Culture, 1840-1880

Cody, Emily Kathryn
http://orcid.org/0000-0002-2782-5497
http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1609888798915494

Abstract Details

2021, Doctor of Philosophy, Ohio State University, English.
Since the initial proposal of the Affordable Care Act, the number of bills introduced in state and national legislatures relating to women’s reproductive health has increased markedly, sparking greater public interest in the legal and sociocultural debates surrounding access to abortion services. Scholarship on these issues in English literature usually begins with the late-nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth century, when discourse on contraception and birth control emerged as a parallel current with the women’s suffrage movement in the United States and Great Britain. However, the way discourse on abortion in particular manifested during the earlier part of the Victorian Era has not been explored in depth, leaving a discursive gap regarding understandings of women’s reproductive health in nineteenth-century print culture. Reading Con(tra)ceptions: Women, Abortion, and Reproductive Health in Victorian Literature and Culture, 1840-1880, aims to remedy this gap by exploring abortion more directly, specifically, and contextually in mid-Victorian literature – especially as represented in the novel, contemporary periodicals, and various forms of epistolary works. Focusing on realist texts, I consider Elizabeth Gaskell’s Mary Barton with an eye toward the historically classed associations behind herb gardens and how access to different forms of medicine informs depictions of working-class motherhood. I then examine the ways George Eliot’s Middlemarch effectively works to counter rather than reinforce Darwinian notions of “male-dominated choice,” instead underscoring how representations of family planning showcase instances of women’s reproductive choice. Finally, I explore how examples of Victorian erotica such as My Secret Life also maintain critical rhetorical roots in realism, providing important, explicit glimpses into mid- century discourses about sexuality – including notably clearer, straightforward discussions about abortion and women’s reproductive health.
Clare Simmons (Advisor)
Amanpal Garcha (Committee Member)
Robyn Warhol (Committee Member)
197 p.
British and Irish Literature; Gender Studies; History; Womens Studies
Victorian literature; nineteenth-century print culture; reproductive health; contraception; abortion

Recommended Citations

Citations

  • Cody, E. K. (2021). Reading Con(tra)ceptions: Women, Abortion, and Reproductive Health in Victorian Literature and Culture, 1840-1880 [Doctoral dissertation, Ohio State University]. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1609888798915494

    APA Style (7th edition)

  • Cody, Emily. Reading Con(tra)ceptions: Women, Abortion, and Reproductive Health in Victorian Literature and Culture, 1840-1880. 2021. Ohio State University, Doctoral dissertation. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center, http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1609888798915494.

    MLA Style (8th edition)

  • Cody, Emily. "Reading Con(tra)ceptions: Women, Abortion, and Reproductive Health in Victorian Literature and Culture, 1840-1880." Doctoral dissertation, Ohio State University, 2021. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1609888798915494

    Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition)

osu1609888798915494
© 2021, all rights reserved.
This open access ETD is published by The Ohio State University and OhioLINK.
Release 3.2.12