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DESTRUCTIVE MATERNITY IN AURORA LEIGH

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 January 2013

Laura J. Faulk
Laura J. Faulk*
Affiliation:
Louisiana State University
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Extract

While it is well-known that Victorian women married for financial stability, sexual desire, or social standing, doctors of the time provided another reason: health. Medical texts warned women to make use of their reproductive abilities, to have children to avoid becoming masculine old maids. One anonymous contributor to an 1851 issue of the Journal of Psychological Medicine and Mental Pathology believed the old maid to be physically unwomanly as a result of childlessness.

Type
Research Article
Information
Victorian Literature and Culture , Volume 41 , Issue 1 , March 2013 , pp. 41 - 54
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2013

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