‘What a Hellish Business’: Exploring the Theme of Infant Feeding in the Works of Virginia Woolf

Abstract

Although Virginia Woolf’s interest in the social and political participation of women has garnered decades of critical consideration, there has been limited attention to the historical relevance of maternal themes in her works. This article begins to address this gap by offering an analysis of Woolf’s writing on infant feeding, a trope which emerges in her very earliest fiction and continues throughout her canon. During Woolf’s lifetime maternal discourses were rooted in changes in employment, social structure, politics, philanthropy and science. Her writing on maternity is especially valuable not only because of her response to these contemporary events—the trope of infant feeding, for example, offers another critical approach to her thoughts on class—but also due to the deeply personal aspect of the subject. Exploring a variety of ways Woolf engaged with infant feeding, the author here considers how such a theme offers a fresh perspective on Woolf’s feminism, social engagement and feelings about creating art.

Keywords:

• Virginia Woolf
• motherhood
• milk
• infant feeding
• feminism
• class

Acknowledgements

The images in this article were sourced and licensed with the invaluable help of Genevieve Coyle in the Manuscripts and Archive department at Yale University Library, Jill Moretto at GlaxoSmithKline, and Christine Black of the Waiuku Museum Society. With additional thanks to Professor Mark Wollaeger.

Disclosure Statement

No conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Because the eugenics movement was multifaceted – Richard Overy has described it as ‘a broad church whose congregation sang loudly if discordantly’ (2009: 106) – Woolf was able to internalise and expound certain aspects of the doctrine while simultaneously treating the Eugenics Society, and its reliance on traditionalist patriarchal structures, with characteristic irony. A Room of One’s Own is particularly influenced by the type of ‘feminist eugenics’ that pioneered birth control and concentrated on the emancipation of women.

2 Rachel’s ‘difficult’ (Woolf 1992a: 48) and absorbing Bach can be compared with the villagers’ singing which ‘slid up a little way and down a little way, and settled again upon the same low and melancholy note’ (269).

3 In To the Lighthouse Mrs Ramsay takes pride in her French heritage and displays it through food, recalling her Boeuf en Daube as ‘a French recipe of my grandmother’s’ (Woolf 2000b: 109).