What I think this difference in approach reveals, albeit subtly, is that Sharp is far keener (unlike other places in Parey's text) to avoid lying the blame for a monstrous birth solely at the door of the mother. Instead, she assigns a portion of blame to the father and, perhaps most surprisingly, avoids accounting for the birth's occurrence solely by the means of astrology or religion. By early modern necessity, and to avoid what could be some extremely uncomfortable criticism, she does concede that 'we must not exclude the Divine vengeance' (see extract below) in accounting for a monstrous birth, but in the latter half of this sentence goes on to reveal her evident skepticism about relying upon it entirely as a way of explaining this natural phenomena.
Below I have included several excerpts which I think best show this contrast in gendered approaches to monstrous births in Parey's and Sharp's texts. As ever, I have preserved the early modern spelling and capitalization of the two texts, both of which can be found on EEBO.
The Workes of
that famous Chirugion Ambrose Parey (1649):
- ‘Dorothie an
Italian had twentie children at two births; at the first nine, and at the
second eleve, and that shee was so big, that shee was forced to bear up her
bellie, which laie upon her knees, with a broad and large scarf tied about her
neck, as you may see by this figure’ (p. 655).
- ‘In the year
of our Lord 1570 … at Paris … these two infants were born, differing in sex,
with that shape of bodie that you see here expressed in the figure’ (p. 652).
‘In the year
1530, there was a man to bee seen at Paris, out of whose bellie another,
perfect in all his members except head, hanged forth as if it had been grafted
there. The man was fortie years old, and hee carried the other implanted or
growing out of him, in his arms, with such admiration to the beholders, that
manie ran verie earnestly to see him’ (p. 650).
The Midwives
Book: or the whole Art of Midwifry Discovered (1671):
‘Of the
causes of Monstrous Conceptions’
- ‘What should
be the causes of Monstrous Conceptions hath troubled many great Learned men.
Alcabitius saith, if the Moon be in some Degrees when the child is conceived,
it will be a Monster. Astrologers they seeke the cause in the stars, but
Ministers refer it to the just judgements of God, they do not condemn the
Parent or the Child in such cases, but take our blessed Saviours answer to his
Disciples, who askt him, who sinned the
Parent or the Child, that he was born blind? Our Saviour replyed, neither he nor his Parents, but that the
Judgements of God might be made manifest in him. In all such cases, we must
not exclude the Divine vengeance; yet all these errors of Nature as to the
Instrumental causes are either from the material or efficient cause of procreation’
(p. 116).
- 'The matter is
the seed, which may fail three several wayes, either when it is too much, and
then the members are larger, or more than they should be, or too little, and
then there will be some part or the whole too little, or else the seed of both
sexes is ill mixed, as of men or women with beasts and certainly it is likely
that no such creatures are born but by unnatural mixtures, yet God can punish
the world with such grievous punishments, and that justly for our sins’ (pp.
116-17).
- 'But the
efficient cause of Monsters, is either from the forming faculty in the Seed, or
else the strength of imagination joined with it; add to these the menstrous
blood and the disposition of the Matrix; sometimes the mother is frighted or
conceives wonders, or longs strangely for things not to be had, and the child
is markd accordingly by it’ (pp. 117-18).
1. Ambrose Parey, The Workes of that famous Chirugion Ambrose Parey (1649), in EEBO.
2. Jane Sharp, The Midwives Book: or the whole Art of Midwifry Discovered (1671), in EEBO.
© Jenna Townend 2013
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