The Transition Of The Brith Control Movement In Nineteenth-century Britain

The transition of the birth culture and family structure is a very important part of the modernization in the nineteenth-century Britain.During this period,the birth culture of Britain had gradually transitioned from the concept of conforming to God and unrestrained fertility,to the concept of living standard-oriented and self-planned fertility,and the mainstream family structure had evolved from a traditional big family to a nuclear family.In this transition,the birth control movement that aimed to consciously limit the number of people and family size by using artificial means had played an important role,which promoted the modernization of the birth culture in 19th-century Britain.However,Due to the subversive challenge to the traditional birth culture,the early birth control movement was confronted with heavy resistance from both the law and the public opinion.Thus it tended to be small-scale and private,and had always been difficult for the public to understand.Nevertheless,the Bradlaugh-Besant trial that took place in 1877 has brought a lot of attention to the birth control movement,which has promoted the popularization of the birth control movement and brought the movement to a new stage.The case also helped to promote the transition of the concept of childbearing in Britain.In brief,This article can be divided into three parts as follows:The first chapter mainly discusses the thought and practice of the early birth control movement.The period before the Bradlaugh-Besant Trial was the early stage of the birth control movement and the formation period of the birth control theory.The concept of birth control was one of the main ideas put forward by the nineteenth century thinkers in order to solve the poverty problem,because the widespread serious poverty problem in the early stage of industrialization that was eroding the country's finances and people's physical quality urgently needed to be resolved.The idea of birth control that was first put forward by Thomas Malthus and improved by Neo-Malthusianism thinkers had become more and more mature,and had put into practice by anonymous propaganda.However,due to the subversion of the traditional birth culture,the birth control movement had been suppressed by both public opinion and the law:People that influenced by Christian birth culture and the severe sexual morality of Victorian society could hardly accept contraception;And the movement was in a legal gray zone where were great risks of being prosecuted.So the brith control movement fell in a predicament of popularity that can only be confined to a small circle of some middle class intellectuals.The second chapter elaborates the beginning and ending of the Bradlaugh-Besant case in the birth control movement.Charles Bradlaugh and Annie Besant were both staunch secularists and supporters of birth control ideas.In March 1877,Bradlaugh and Besant established a publishing company to republish a birth control book named Fruit of Philosophy and sold it publicly in London,as a result of dissatisfaction with the authorities' judgment of the book as an illegal publication.They were arrested and faced with the allegation of publishing "obscene books".The trial took place in the High Court of Justice,Queen' s Bench Division in June 1877.During the four-day trial,the prosecution and the defender debated around issues such as the nature of the book,the rationality of birth control,and the impact of birth control on social morality.These debates reflected violent conflicts between the traditional birth culture and the modern birth culture.Finally,The trial ended with the victory of Bradlaugh and Besant in the Court of Appeal.The third chapter analyzes the social impact and the appraisal of the Bradlaugh-Besant trial.The trial had caused great controversy of community at that time.Despite the mixed attitudes of public opinion,the case aroused widespread concern,and the idea of birth control came into the millions of households in Britain through the mass media,mainly newspapers.At the same time,Bradlaugh and Besant's birth control ideas that had expressed in the defense words also became well-known by the reports of the mass media,which effectively affected the concept of fertility in Britain.The Malthusian League that established in the same year was the most important legacy of the Bradlaugh-Besant trial.It helped to convert the propaganda of the birth control movement from decentralization to systematization,and had a more lasting effect on the transition of the concept of fertility.Thus the enormous social influence of this case promoted the birth control movement from the previous period of small-scale,private,decentralized to a new stage of popular,open and systematic.When we place the Bradlaugh-Besant trial in the whole history of the birth control movement throughout the nineteenth century,we could see that the reason why this case could promote the transition of birth control movement in this point of time is closely linked to the condition of the development of the economy and society of Britain in the 1870s.A series of changes such as the higher income,the demand of skilled worker,the popularization of education,the decline of the importance of traditional religion were changing the family structure from a traditional large family to a modem nuclear family,and the birth control theory had provided a theoretical foundation for these changes.So the Bradlaugh-Besant trial and the transition of the birth control movement that this case was not only the result of a series of happenstances and individual wills,but also the result of economic and cultural transition in the industrialized era.It can be seen as a combination of possibility and inevitability.