Previous chapters have discussed infanticide in relation to liminality. Areas considered have been how unwed, pregnant women may have felt about themselves – neither maid, widow, nor wife – and how the loose laws related to marriage meant it could be unclear whether a couple were married or not, a situation which could easily lead to the abandonment of pregnant women. The whipping and penance which were the punishments meted out to bastard bearers called upon many aspects of rites of passage identified by Turner, with their elements of showing, doing and saying, and punishment continued with the proscriptions on providing work and lodging for unwed women who were pregnant or who had a child. The tropes of infanticide – pregnancy denial, the shame of speaking of what they had done, and concealing the increasingly obvious physical signs of pregnancy, creates the impression of women who were isolated. In part they were indeed isolated by their shame, fear, and in some cases doubtless their ignorance, as Peter C. Hoffer and N.E.H. Hull suggest.

Nevertheless, a woman who committed infanticide would have lived within a community some of whom constantly ignored various indications that this crime could be the climax of the trajectory upon which she was embarked. This is the area considered in the first part of this chapter.