Early Modern Maternities in the Iberian Atlantic is the first volume to emphasize women’s personal experiences and their life trajectories as mothers within the Peninsula and across the Atlantic. Although an official discourse that defined the conditions of motherhood emerged in the eighteenth century, before this period there were many different articulations of motherhood through which women negotiated hierarchical relationships, power struggles and alliances. While the individual experiences were unique and depended upon the positionality of race and class, the complexities of being a mother were universal. The wide variety of written and visual documents included in this volume highlight women’s voices in the first person along with more subtle references to motherhood as well as silences. This collection broadens our understanding of the complexities of motherhood, addressing the pressures of becoming a mother, miscarriage, the acts of giving birth and lactation and the ordeals of raising children. The first volume on the topic; it is interdisciplinary (with contributions from historians, art historians, literary critics, etc); it brings together essays within multiple perspectives( e.g, slave women, indiginous women, poor and aristocratic women, royal women); contributors are at several academic ranks and from different countries.
Arvustused
"That is why a book like this is as timely as it is necessarywhere women take the floor to speak for themselves, without intermediaries, about their experience of motherhood. Only in this way can we truly grasp the subject of study and place it within the Hispanic world based on preserved documentation: from the pressure experiencedanalogous to that of the Countess of Chinchón, but regardless of social statusto become a mother; to the risks associated with childbirth, including miscarriage; and finally, to the path that must be navigated through breastfeeding and child-rearing." [ Translated form Spanish] - Elisabeth Garcia Marrasé, Revista de Demografía Histórica Journal of Iberoamerican Population Studies , XLI, I, 2024
Acknowledgements
List of Illustrations
Introduction - Emily Colbert Cairns and Nieves Romero-Díaz
Defining Maternity
1. Debra Blumenthal, Services for which I expect to be compensated:
Mothering as a Salaried Labor of Love in the Late Medieval Crown of Aragon
2. Grace E. Coolidge, Noble Maternity in Castile, 14001650
3. Mercedes Llorente, Maternity in the Portraits of Spanish Habsburg Queens:
Mariana of Habsburg
4. Rocío Quispe-Agnoli, The Stains of the Mother: Indian Mothers and Mestizo
Children in Early Colonial Peru
Becoming Pregnant and Giving Birth
5. Carolina Alarcón, Urinating on Lettuce and Throwing Your Hands Up:
Infertility in Early Modern Spain
6. Vanda Anastácio, Motherhood and Gender: When the Queen has only
Daughters. The Case of Victoria de Bourbon (171881)
7. Emily Kuffner, Para retener la criatura: Miscarriage in Early Modern
Spain
8. Montserrat Pérez Toribio, Maternal Bodies and Fertile Letters: The
Politics of Motherhood Networking in Estefania de Requesens Correspondence
Daily Living Motherhood
9. Catherine Hall-van den Elsen, Motherhood and the Early Modern Woman
Artist
10. Yolopattli Hernández Torres, Casa de Niños Expósitos: The Substitute
Mother in Colonial Mexico
11. Mariela Fargas Peñarrocha, Cruel or Prudent Mothers? Troubled
Relationships, Disobedient Daughters, and Social Risk (Eighteenth-century
Barcelona)
Afterwords - Emilie Bergmann
Index
List of Contributors
Emily Colbert Cairns is an Associate Professor of Spanish at Salve Regina University. She specializes in gender and conversos. She is the author of Esther in Early Modern Iberia and the Sephardic Diaspora: Queen of the Conversas and co-editor of Confined Women: The Walls of Female Space in Early Modern Spain. Nieves Romero-Díaz is Professor of Spanish on the Alumnae Foundation at Mount Holyoke College. Her research explores the intersection of politics and emotions in womens lives and their writings. Among her many publications, it is worth highlighting Nueva nobleza, nueva novela, Warning to the Kings and Advice of Restoring Spain: A Bilingual Edition and her work on María de Ágredas correspondence.
