The effects on the nature of medical discourse on the sense of spatiality and self image of eighteenth century women

This dissertation is an historical study of the ways in which the body image and self image of middle class women in late eighteenth century England were impacted by the changing medical discourse on the topics of pregnancy and childbirth. Based on heuristic research of the medical texts of midwives and physicians operating during the eighteenth century as well as the social parameters of the political, work, home, recreational, and reproductive spheres of women, this dissertation analyzes the limitations on social identities and progressive visions created for women through esoteric medical discourse and systems of knowledge.;The state of pregnancy, the act of childbirth, and the relationships that middle to late eighteenth century women had to medical knowledge, harboured distinct forms of philosophical and institutionalized medical assumptions. These were propagated through the processes of knowledge production, linguistic and literary expressions, physical practices, and the creation of social networks surrounding a process and event that only women could and can undergo. One of the ramifications of these processes was a reconstruction of women's body and self image. The displacement of women as midwives in the mid-eighteenth century in favor of male physicians, male midwives, and institutionalized childbirth represented an academically hierarchical shift, and removed the exercise of knowledge production and transferal from the realm of women. I argue that this shift, along with women's increasing dependency on technology during childbirth; their reliance on medical texts for assurance of their own normalcy and health; and their entry into a technologically-based set of understandings about the natural world, altered their abilities to envision themselves both physically and psychologically, affecting their self and body images.