‘Sucking the Corrupte Mylke of an Infected Nurse’: regulating the dangerous maternal body

Abstract

Drawing on medieval medical encyclopaedias, early modern and Victorian advice books, as well as twentieth scientific advice to mothers, and linking them to present-day mothering discourse in the media, this article discusses cultural attitudes towards breast-milk and nursing mothers. The texts present a paradox in that while breast-milk is claimed as the best food for an infant, and mothers who choose not to nurse are vilified, it is simultaneously discussed as a potential poison and corrupting agent. I argue that the fear of breast-milk is a symptom of a cultural anxiety that periodically resurfaces, constructing the maternal body as threat to the infant, a threat that must be controlled and contained.

Keywords::

• breast-milk
• breastfeeding
• medieval
• early modern
• Victorian

Notes

^1. Although some work has been done on historical trends concerning advice to mothers, there have not been any dedicated studies of attitudes towards breast-milk over the centuries. In Dream babies: childcare advice from John Locke to Gina Ford (2007), Christina Hardyment surveys attitudes towards child rearing, both physical and mental. Similarly, Barbara Ehrenreich and Deirdre English analyse advice given to women over the last 200 years, in terms of their own health and sexuality, as well as motherhood and childcare, in their book For her own good: two centuries of the experts' advice to women (2005). In her article ‘The ethics of breastfeeding’, Rachel Muers (2010) draws on a 1695 text urging mothers to breastfeed.

^2. Because of the limitations of the material, I will only discuss white, middle-class, British and US mothers.

^3. ‘all superfluity that is bred in men's bodies turns into hair or is purged through work or lost through the strength and power of heat’ (my translation).

^4. ‘by virtue of heat turns into milk’ (my translation).

^5. Aristotle stated in Historia Animalium that the ‘the thin milk produced in the first days following childbirth was unsuitable for infants’ (Yalom 1997, p. 207).

^6. Disease and breastfeeding are also linked in present-day HIV discourse (Koricho et al.2010).

^7. For a summary of reactions, see http://latino.foxnews.com/latino/health/2012/05/11/time-magazine-cover-stirs-breastfeeding-controversy/ [Accessed 17 June 2013].

^8. Popular culture sometimes exploits the taboo concerning extended breastfeeding for comedic or dramatic effect. Examples include the British comedy programme Little Britain (2003–2006), which contains a recurring character, an adult man still suckling his mother, and the US drama programme Game of Thrones (2011), in which the character Lyssa Stark is shown breastfeeding her son, seemingly at least 6 years old.

^9. For examples of how this changing focus is expressed, see Greene, Mahoney and ‘Brain-boosting food for kids’.

^10. The present-day fear of the mother's enjoyment is echoed in a case reported by Cindy Stearns, in which an American mother temporarily had her child removed by Social Services, when she admitted that she experienced sexual arousal when breastfeeding (1999, p. 309).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Berit Åström

Berit Åström, Ph.D. in English Literature, is a Senior Lecturer at the Department of Language Studies at Umeå University, Sweden. A recipient of the Marie Curie Fellowship, she has published on Old English poetry, male pregnancy fan fiction and the concept of ‘referred pain’ in Shakespeare and the film Mission Impossible 2. She is currently working on a transhistorical study of dead and absent mothers in Western literature. Amongst her more recent publications is Rape in Stieg Larsson's Millennium Trilogy and Beyond: Contemporary Scandinavian and Anglophone Crime Fiction, 2013.