Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- Dedication
- Acknowledgments
- Author’s notes
- 1 Losses, Lacunae and Liminality
- 2 European and Medieval Contexts of Infanticide
- 3 The Liminal child and mother
- 4 Love, Law and Liminality
- 5 Constructing Outsiders, Constructing Killers
- 6 Not the Usual Suspects: Communities and Accomplices
- 7 Not the Usual Suspects: Married Women
- 8 Not the Usual Suspects: Men
- 9 Interlude: Infanticide 1700–1950
- 10 Epilogue: Echoes of the Past
- Appendix 1 The 1624 Infanticide Act
- Appendix 2 Note on Sussex Coroners’ inquests
- Appendix 3 Sussex Cases of Violent, Unnatural, Unexplained Infant Death 1547–1686
- Appendix 4 Sussex Infant Deaths Involving Water
- Appendix 5 Sussex Infant Deaths Involving Throwing
- Appendix 6 Sussex Infant Deaths Involving Bloodshed or Extreme Violence
- Appendix 7 Sussex Infant Deaths Showing Direct Involvement of Men
- Index
3 - The Liminal child and mother
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 21 November 2020
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- Dedication
- Acknowledgments
- Author’s notes
- 1 Losses, Lacunae and Liminality
- 2 European and Medieval Contexts of Infanticide
- 3 The Liminal child and mother
- 4 Love, Law and Liminality
- 5 Constructing Outsiders, Constructing Killers
- 6 Not the Usual Suspects: Communities and Accomplices
- 7 Not the Usual Suspects: Married Women
- 8 Not the Usual Suspects: Men
- 9 Interlude: Infanticide 1700–1950
- 10 Epilogue: Echoes of the Past
- Appendix 1 The 1624 Infanticide Act
- Appendix 2 Note on Sussex Coroners’ inquests
- Appendix 3 Sussex Cases of Violent, Unnatural, Unexplained Infant Death 1547–1686
- Appendix 4 Sussex Infant Deaths Involving Water
- Appendix 5 Sussex Infant Deaths Involving Throwing
- Appendix 6 Sussex Infant Deaths Involving Bloodshed or Extreme Violence
- Appendix 7 Sussex Infant Deaths Showing Direct Involvement of Men
- Index
Summary
Abstract
Works by theologians, lawyers and medical practitioners, as well as historical archives, drama and popular literature, demonstrate the uncertainty about when an infant should be regarded as being part of this world. Thus, newborns were constructed as liminal beings, a confusing situation which could lead mothers to be unclear about whether ending these new lives was murder. Similarly, the practices related to women with child, which included special diets, and ultimately retreat to a dedicated birthing chamber and the company of women, constructed pregnant women as liminal. This was a world from which those who were unwed and secretly pregnant were excluded which contributed to constructing them as outsiders. Thus, both the newborn infant and its mother were socially constructed to be in a state of liminality or otherness.
Keywords: When did life begin; Childbirth customs; Cultural significance of water; Waste and abjection; Violent deaths
She took the child, which was then dead wrapped it in
a cloth, carried it downstairs and laid it in a settle.
Pieter Bruegel the Elder's son painted many versions of the biblical story of Herod's Massacre of the Innocents, but his father's original has its own story. Shortly after its completion it came into the possession of the Holy Roman Emperor Rudolph II who, for reasons unknown, ordered that the details of infant slaughter be painted over. Instead of infant death, it became an image of soldiers plundering a village. Yet, despite a later, uknown, artist's attempt to replace one crime with a less horrific one, strangely human details can be seen beneath images of dead geese, women grieving over indeterminate bundles, and tussles over the ownership of a calf. The abandoned garments and shadowy feet of murdered infants suggest an existence between being and non-being and thus unintentionally reflect the conflicting early modern beliefs about unborn, newborn and very young infants.
Beliefs and attitudes toward new lives
The point at which an infant was regarded as having existence is essential to the study of infanticide, but the question was far from straightforward for early modern people. Between conception and birth – during the development from embryo to newborn – the infant could be considered as simultaneously part of, or separate from, the human world.
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- Information
- Infanticide in Tudor and Stuart England , pp. 77 - 112Publisher: Amsterdam University PressPrint publication year: 2019