Childbirth and the Display of Authority in Early Modern France

Abstract

Lianne McTavish, Childbirth and the Display of Authority in Early Modern France , London: Ashgate, 2005. Pp. 272. £45. ISBN 0–7546–3619–4. Lianne McTavish has written a fascinating account of the visual culture of childbirth in early modern France. Her study is far more than an analysis of the illustrations in midwifery manuals, although she makes good use of her art-historical training in doing this. Instead, in a refreshing style light on jargon, she explicates what looking and being looked at meant in birthing rooms. McTavish's work makes several important contributions to the growing literature on early modern childbirth and midwifery. First, she situates oft-quoted criticisms of female midwives in the larger and contentious world of the early modern medical market-place. Male midwives were not just criticising their female counterparts; they were busy hurling aspersions at each other too. For example, McTavish shows how cousins Pierre Dionis and François Mauriceau each tried to appropriate female bodily experiences of pregnancy and childbirth. Mauriceau described the labour, delivery and death of his sister in moving detail while Dionis struck a low blow by comparing his wife's 20 pregnancies with Mauriceau's infertile marriage. Second, in her analysis of the visual politics of the birthing chamber, McTavish draws upon the work of scholars such as Louis Marin, who have discussed the significance of seeing and being seen for the production of monarchical authority. Men were on display in the birthing chamber, and they knew it, devising various strategies to cope with female modesty and the less-dignified aspects of their tasks. Jacques Guillemeau transmuted male-midwives' inability to see the object of their concerns from a disadvantage into a testament of skill. No other branch of surgery, Guillemeau boasted, was performed solely by touch. One of the strengths of this book is its joint examination of male and female midwives. Louise Bourgeois practised within the same visual regimes as her male counterparts, and alleged that it was Marie de Medici's wordless and brief visual inspection of Bourgeois that earned her the coveted job of accoucheur to the Queen.

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