This is such an amazing video Tilly! This theme actually caught my attention a bit this year when reading about Mrs. Palmer in S&S, and I started wondering about it in Austen's other books. I somehow never paid much attention to Mrs. Weston's pregnancy. I can't wait to reread Emma and pay more attention to her. A fun and rather tangential fact, some of my hair that I lost postpartum is growing back in those weird regency curls that frame the face. I considered showing them off for JAJ, but I was too lazy to change into a regency style dress and just pinned them back instead.
Yes it was rereading S&S that really brought it forward for me. I was amazed when I thought about the actual calendar and saw how she must have been more or less in her third trimester already. Interestingly in Emma, we see so much more of Mrs Weston but her pregnancy is so much more disguised. I forgot to mention that even at the ball (when she was maybe 7 months pregnant) no one seems to know about it. I haven't fully reread Emma that recently, but I will definitely look out for earlier clues next time. Your curls sound delightful. My hair has been exceptionally problematic throughout pregnancy, so I think losing a chunk postpartum and having it regrow will probably be good for it!
This was amazing! Fantastic video. I read an interesting diary of a pregnant woman from the 1830s a while back, where she wrote about her feeling unwell, but never wrote down in her diary that she was pregnant. When she wrote about doing knitting for her baby, she left the word baby as a blank. I don’t know how much of that was superstition and how much delicacy, but I found that fascinating.
Thank you! That does sound interesting - and I'd be inclined to think superstition? It must have been an anxious time for a woman and hard not to be able to discuss that openly.
Brilliant. I had really not paid attention to this in the novels so it is wonderful to have you draw out all these "situations" for me. Can't imagine why you are interested in this topic this year 😅
@@scallydandlingaboutthebook2711 What's surprising is that her character is so present throughout the book, but until then we have no indication of her pregnancy. Even at the ball, which takes place in May, Mr Elton suggests dancing with her - she declines, but just by saying that she could get him a better partner. So it seems that even at 7 months pregnant among her closest neighbours it's simply not common knowledge at all.
Wonderful, informative video! Thank you! Re other pregnancies we hear about the late stages of pregnancy and confinement of Mrs Wallis in Persuasion. Mr and Mrs Wallis are great friends of Mr Elliot the heir. Mrs Wallis and Mrs Smith, the school friend of Anne, share a nurse, Mrs Rooke, who is an important source of gossip and allows Anne to find through Mrs Smith that her engagement to Mr Elliott is considered as a certainty in the society. It is also bizarre by modern standards that Mrs Rooke is not exclusively a natal nurse but can attend a newborn and adults with various illnesses at the same time. Again,thank you for your research, its was really insightful. Hope you enjoy the summer in your situation:)
Thank you! And I can't believe I forgot about Mrs Wallis - although having had a skim through today, we never meet her in person, we're only told that she's "in daily expectation of her confinement" and being attended by Nurse Rooke, so I guess she has less impact on the story. I have no idea whether nurses focused on different phases of life, though I do suspect that most private nurses simply went where they could find employment. However, I would say that it seems that Nurse Rooke is attending Mrs Wallis, rather than her baby, from the way that it is described. She is also (it seems) not paid to treat Mrs Smith, but assists her informally as her sister is Mrs Smith's landlady and she then helps her with her knitting business.
I seem to remember reading that several of Jane Austen's sisters-in-law died during or after childbirth. Like you said, there was a great danger attached to things going wrong during a woman's first confinement, but for women who had child after child the risks seemed to go up again with later pregnancies. This was a very interesting topic. I came upon it months after Jane Austen July, but really enjoyed it!
Another big factor in safety was spacing of children (as it still is today without birth control access). Women getting pregnant soon after previous births faced higher risks. Glad you enjoyed the video!
If she were alive today, I wouldn’t be surprised if Jane Austen was consciously childfree. She’s happy to have little nieces and nephews and cousins and wishes the pregnant women in her circle well, but if she really wanted to have and rear children and that was super important to her, she had opportunities and turned them down. This was an interesting and unexpected choice of topic. I don’t think I have seen any analysis of this topic before, let alone in the depth you’ve gone to here. Well done!
It's an interesting suggestion, but I don't think we have enough to say one side or the other. If her preference against matrimony was due to wanting to maintain her career and independence, that would apply less today, and if she was afraid of being a mother due to the risks involved (which is what I have seen suggested due to comments in her letters) that again would be lessened today. But on the other hand, there would be less social pressure to conform to marriage and children. It's something we can never know. Thank you and glad you enjoyed it - I did find a few scattered blog posts about the topic, but they tended to focus more on her letters rather than what happened in the books so I felt there was something to add.
In a fair amount of historical fiction as well as actual diary entries from the time, the term "being in a delicate condition" or the word condition seems to be used a lot to talk about regnancy. I also read that there was a lot of expectation that men were somehow more intelligent than women by default, especially once they were married. Actually it was thought to be dangerous if a woman was seen as too intelligent, so some would pretend they knew nothing. One account of a woman who used to to be a teacher before she married and had her first child, says that the woman even asked the nurse looking after the child how often the clothes needed changing or how often to bath the child etc. It seems to have gone in something of a cycle, because as you said, in previous centuries only women were allowed at the birth then male doctors and midwives maybe, but since the newer medical systems and practices came in we ended up with again only women working in maternity wards and units. I read something from the 1950s or 1960s that was a list of things for the expecting mother to take to a maternity unit. At the bottom it even said that only the husband was allowed to visit, so I assume there was some kind of policy in that particular place of no other visìtors allowed at all.
Sorry it's taken me so long to respond to this! I'd heard the term condition used a lot in historical fiction etc so I did expect it to be that, but Austen seems to have preferred situation. Possibly it's even more delicate? Though I'd say that questions about how often to wash a baby and so on are probably fairly normal for new parents, intelligence aside, if it's something you've never done before. And even today there are a lot of restrictions on visiting - during covid a lot of mothers were separated from their partners.
This is such an amazing video Tilly! This theme actually caught my attention a bit this year when reading about Mrs. Palmer in S&S, and I started wondering about it in Austen's other books. I somehow never paid much attention to Mrs. Weston's pregnancy. I can't wait to reread Emma and pay more attention to her. A fun and rather tangential fact, some of my hair that I lost postpartum is growing back in those weird regency curls that frame the face. I considered showing them off for JAJ, but I was too lazy to change into a regency style dress and just pinned them back instead.
Yes it was rereading S&S that really brought it forward for me. I was amazed when I thought about the actual calendar and saw how she must have been more or less in her third trimester already. Interestingly in Emma, we see so much more of Mrs Weston but her pregnancy is so much more disguised. I forgot to mention that even at the ball (when she was maybe 7 months pregnant) no one seems to know about it. I haven't fully reread Emma that recently, but I will definitely look out for earlier clues next time.
Your curls sound delightful. My hair has been exceptionally problematic throughout pregnancy, so I think losing a chunk postpartum and having it regrow will probably be good for it!
This was amazing! Fantastic video.
I read an interesting diary of a pregnant woman from the 1830s a while back, where she wrote about her feeling unwell, but never wrote down in her diary that she was pregnant. When she wrote about doing knitting for her baby, she left the word baby as a blank. I don’t know how much of that was superstition and how much delicacy, but I found that fascinating.
Thank you!
That does sound interesting - and I'd be inclined to think superstition? It must have been an anxious time for a woman and hard not to be able to discuss that openly.
Brilliant. I had really not paid attention to this in the novels so it is wonderful to have you draw out all these "situations" for me. Can't imagine why you are interested in this topic this year 😅
Yes, so strange that I suddenly felt drawn to this topic... And feel very sympathetic towards Mrs Weston being tired!
@@tillysshelf I managed to ignore the fact she was heavily pregnant that day.
@@scallydandlingaboutthebook2711 What's surprising is that her character is so present throughout the book, but until then we have no indication of her pregnancy. Even at the ball, which takes place in May, Mr Elton suggests dancing with her - she declines, but just by saying that she could get him a better partner. So it seems that even at 7 months pregnant among her closest neighbours it's simply not common knowledge at all.
@@tillysshelf I suppose the dress styles helped.
Thank you Tilly I enjoy this very interesting to listen to .❤
Thank you!
this made me realise how completely i missed pregnant women in austen's novels !! this was so interesting ty :)
I know, they are easy to miss but they're in there somewhere! I even missed one or two.
Wonderful, informative video! Thank you! Re other pregnancies we hear about the late stages of pregnancy and confinement of Mrs Wallis in Persuasion. Mr and Mrs Wallis are great friends of Mr Elliot the heir. Mrs Wallis and Mrs Smith, the school friend of Anne, share a nurse, Mrs Rooke, who is an important source of gossip and allows Anne to find through Mrs Smith that her engagement to Mr Elliott is considered as a certainty in the society. It is also bizarre by modern standards that Mrs Rooke is not exclusively a natal nurse but can attend a newborn and adults with various illnesses at the same time. Again,thank you for your research, its was really insightful. Hope you enjoy the summer in your situation:)
Thank you! And I can't believe I forgot about Mrs Wallis - although having had a skim through today, we never meet her in person, we're only told that she's "in daily expectation of her confinement" and being attended by Nurse Rooke, so I guess she has less impact on the story. I have no idea whether nurses focused on different phases of life, though I do suspect that most private nurses simply went where they could find employment. However, I would say that it seems that Nurse Rooke is attending Mrs Wallis, rather than her baby, from the way that it is described. She is also (it seems) not paid to treat Mrs Smith, but assists her informally as her sister is Mrs Smith's landlady and she then helps her with her knitting business.
I seem to remember reading that several of Jane Austen's sisters-in-law died during or after childbirth. Like you said, there was a great danger attached to things going wrong during a woman's first confinement, but for women who had child after child the risks seemed to go up again with later pregnancies. This was a very interesting topic. I came upon it months after Jane Austen July, but really enjoyed it!
Another big factor in safety was spacing of children (as it still is today without birth control access). Women getting pregnant soon after previous births faced higher risks. Glad you enjoyed the video!
If she were alive today, I wouldn’t be surprised if Jane Austen was consciously childfree. She’s happy to have little nieces and nephews and cousins and wishes the pregnant women in her circle well, but if she really wanted to have and rear children and that was super important to her, she had opportunities and turned them down.
This was an interesting and unexpected choice of topic. I don’t think I have seen any analysis of this topic before, let alone in the depth you’ve gone to here. Well done!
It's an interesting suggestion, but I don't think we have enough to say one side or the other. If her preference against matrimony was due to wanting to maintain her career and independence, that would apply less today, and if she was afraid of being a mother due to the risks involved (which is what I have seen suggested due to comments in her letters) that again would be lessened today. But on the other hand, there would be less social pressure to conform to marriage and children. It's something we can never know.
Thank you and glad you enjoyed it - I did find a few scattered blog posts about the topic, but they tended to focus more on her letters rather than what happened in the books so I felt there was something to add.
@@tillysshelf oh, absolutely - that’s why I said I wouldn’t be surprised if, not that I think she would be.
And, you definitely succeeded!
So very interesting. Thank you!
Glad you found it interesting!
In a fair amount of historical fiction as well as actual diary entries from the time, the term "being in a delicate condition" or the word condition seems to be used a lot to talk about regnancy. I also read that there was a lot of expectation that men were somehow more intelligent than women by default, especially once they were married. Actually it was thought to be dangerous if a woman was seen as too intelligent, so some would pretend they knew nothing. One account of a woman who used to to be a teacher before she married and had her first child, says that the woman even asked the nurse looking after the child how often the clothes needed changing or how often to bath the child etc. It seems to have gone in something of a cycle, because as you said, in previous centuries only women were allowed at the birth then male doctors and midwives maybe, but since the newer medical systems and practices came in we ended up with again only women working in maternity wards and units. I read something from the 1950s or 1960s that was a list of things for the expecting mother to take to a maternity unit. At the bottom it even said that only the husband was allowed to visit, so I assume there was some kind of policy in that particular place of no other visìtors allowed at all.
Sorry it's taken me so long to respond to this! I'd heard the term condition used a lot in historical fiction etc so I did expect it to be that, but Austen seems to have preferred situation. Possibly it's even more delicate? Though I'd say that questions about how often to wash a baby and so on are probably fairly normal for new parents, intelligence aside, if it's something you've never done before. And even today there are a lot of restrictions on visiting - during covid a lot of mothers were separated from their partners.
Another excellent video! ❤
Thank you!