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Pregnancy and the Novel: Representation and Concealment from Richardson to Hardy

Lead Research Organisation: Bath Spa University
Department Name: Sch of Writing, Publishing & Humanities

Abstract

This project will be driven by my insights as a novelist who writes literary adaptations of eighteenth- and nineteenth century texts partly to explore the challenges of representing pregnancy in fiction. It will also be informed by my expertise as a literary critic who has long been fascinated by how those before me have responded to pregnancy, especially in the context of violence and other forms of external control. The project's major output will be an academic monograph, Pregnancy and the Novel: Representation and Concealment from Richardson to Hardy. This will draw on medical texts to illuminate the ways that eighteenth- and nineteenth-century novelists simultaneously hide and reveal problematic pregnancies and births. It will reveal a reciprocal influence between literature and science.

My study of the techniques of Richardson, the Brontes, Eliot, Dickens and Hardy informs my own fiction, especially the ways they embed reproductive events, utilise first- and second-person point of view, and depict sensitive or taboo subject matter. The research will also consider the strategies by which the novelists who follow Richardson and precede the Brontes depict pregnancy. Smollett, Sterne, Burney, Lewis, Inchbald, Dacre, Austen and Scott frequently utilise an explicitness or euphemism in order to reflect a character's immodesty or morality. They develop Richardson's strategies for linking pregnancy time to story time, and utilise his techniques of misdirection so that pregnancy masquerades as other illnesses; in light of this, I have made similar experiments in my own novels.

By reconstructing historical knowledge of reproductive medicine and utilising my novelist's habit of reverse engineering the writer's planting of clues, this project will uncover what can easily be missed by twenty-first century readers. The project will change and deepen our understanding of multiple scenes in all of these novels. A few examples will illustrate this. Numerous critics dismiss the possibility of pregnancy in Clarissa (1747-48) or at best attribute the heroine's symptoms to a nervous disorder (e.g. Wilt, Meek, and Lovett). Yet her fainting, weeping and delirium are straight out of contemporary midwifery textbooks. Anne Bronte uses the diary form and references to the seasons to track her heroine's pregnancy in The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (1848). In a clever feint, she describes pregnancy symptoms (a rush of blood, feeling 'ill' and 'unwell', being 'white in the face') that readers are primed to interpret as responses to distress and provocation (Ch. XXVII). Fanny's 'birth giving and death' in Far from the Madding Crowd (1874) have been seen as 'significant narrative ellipses' by a critic (Bronfen, 1993, 70) who overlooked the milestones and posts that Fanny counts and leans against at 'intervals' (Ch. XL) as she struggles to reach the poorhouse, which are surely Hardy's way of writing his heroine's labour into the text.

This project is original because it will recalibrate Richardson's legacy in light of a new understanding of his strategies for embedding pregnancy. It will break new ground by revealing how, after Richardson, eighteenth- and nineteenth-century novelists depict pregnancies and labours that are seemingly absent from their texts but are in fact present. The project will utilise creative methods to involve non-academics in the research and create impact, especially when it comes to ideas of pregnancy and control of our own bodies, and how the language around this might change. Public engagement materials will help pregnant women and birthing people to tell stories and reflect upon experiences, and be of use to advocacy organisations as well as literary societies. I will collaborate with medical practitioners, enhancing their well-being by leading a creative writing workshop for those who are interested in developing their own medical memoirs; and a specialist reading group on concealed pregnancy.

Publications

10 25 50
 
Description I am now six months past the active award period. The most significant achievement from the award was the new knowledge generated with respect to the ways that concealed pregnancy in 18th and 19th century novels continues to resonate in 21st century medicine and in the experiences of real women. I was startled by the number of recent stories in the press that have much in common with fiction that was written centuries ago. In addition, I developed improved research methods and skills, particularly with respect to the application of 18th and 19th century medical texts to the novels of those periods. Important new research resources were identified, including contemporary medical journals that some of the novelists I considered drew on as sources. Furthermore, some of these journals in turn remark upon medical conditions as depicted in the fiction of their respective periods, taking note of what the novelists have to teach medicine about the patient experience. I discovered in my research that the reciprocity between literature and science -- and reproductive medicine in particular -- is more powerful and well-documented than I initially anticipated. Important new research questions opened up through the recurrence in later authors' work of Samuel Richardson's concerns and techniques in CLARISSA , most notably in George Eliot's ADAM BEDE, which is temporally structured to reflect the concealed pregnancy that is central to its plot. I also made new discoveries about the relationship between fiction and 18th-century visual art depicting infanticide. My research on ADAM BEDE was particularly suggestive, given that Eliot anticipates 21st-century child protection and safeguarding protocols in her depiction of a concealed pregnancy experienced by a seventeen year old character. Again anticipating 21st century reproductive science and medicine, William Hunter, and then George Eliot, stress the ethical and legal implications that arise from infanticide's forensic ambiguities, as in turn do many of Eliot's medical contemporaries. No research paths were closed off, though the scope of my research meant that I had had to compress my treatment of the novels in the late-18th and early-19th century which bridge the period leading from Richardson to the Brontës. The award objectives were met in terms of the substantial progress I made with the writing and research for my monograph, PREGNANCY AND THE NOVEL, now called THE PREGNANCY QUESTION AND THE NOVEL, which is the central output of this award. The book has successfully completed the publisher's clearance review process and is now in its final phase of edits, with publication due in November 2025. The objectives that have not yet been met relate to shorter outputs for academic conferences and journals, because it became increasingly clear over the course of the research and writing that the monograph needed to be fully completed before its offshoots would be ready; initially, I had envisaged that the shorter pieces would feed into the longer, but the reverse was true. I also needed to make decisions about priorities in light of the strain that the research put on my eye condition, which was more challenging to manage than I anticipated. I needed to take care not to spread myself too thin, not to switch between too many tasks, and to ensure enough rest for my eyes. I developed a number of strategies that help me progress effectively in light of this. For instance, wherever possible I utilised scans of rare medical textbooks which I could enlarge, rather than the material copies which are often printed in small fonts that I sometimes find physically challenging to deal with. Another objective has been met at a slower pace than I envisaged. This concerns my engagement with medical practitioners, professional bodies and advocacy groups. Pressures on NHS staff time and on the third sector mean I need to adjust my pace to accommodate their needs, so that my findings will be taken forward not just by academics and members of the public, but also by those who work on the front line with those who are affected by concealed pregnancy and infant death.
Exploitation Route With respect to both academic and non-academic routes, the fact that my monograph will be open access means that my key research findings will be accessible in full to a wide audience. This key output will contain public engagement materials in the form of prompts and exercises that arise from the research as a whole; these materials will help pregnant women and birthing people to tell stories and reflect upon experiences, and be of use to advocacy organisations, literary societies, medical practitioners and the creative economy as a whole. One of the publisher's clearance reviewers described these as 'an original and inventive ... series of creative writing prompts based around the reader's own experiences of reading and writing (re-)productively'. In the two years after my active grant period, I will be conducting workshops for medical practitioners in which my research outcomes will be taken forward, working with them to help them find ways to write about their experiences, particularly in the form of the medical memoir.

With respect to pregnancy denial, concealed pregnancy and infanticide, there is a continued relevance of the ideas in the 18th and 19th century novels and medical texts that I researched to 21st-century medical practice. For example, 21st-century medical research acknowledges that the stereotype (of an adolescent with poor social support and learning difficulties, mental health problems and/or drug and alcohol problems) is not supported by the literature. Rather, pregnancy denial is a heterogenous condition associated with different psychological and social features (this latter point will resonate with me in terms of my own long-term creative development long after this project is complete). The diversity of representations of concealed pregnancy in 18th and 19th century medical books and novels is consistent with this heterogeneity as discussed in 21st century medical research. However, these earlier literary and medical texts can be overlooked when we consider how far medical practice has travelled and yet how close it remains to the questions that were being asked about concealed pregnancy, pregnancy denial, and infanticide in previous centuries. Despite progress, these tragic outcomes for pregnant women and their newborns are still with us, and there is a continued need for multiple disciplines (e.g., literary criticism, science, reproductive medicine, law, and creative practice) and their sub-disciplines to intersect in order to make progress in these areas and support those who engage in this vital work.
Sectors Creative Economy

Education

Healthcare

Government

Democracy and Justice
 
Description I am now six months past my active grant period, and actively working on the final edit of my main output, a monograph, so my findings are not yet being used to the extent that they will be once this is published. Publication is due in November 2025. However, the wider impact of the grant that I am reporting on is beginning to be generated through a range of diverse pathways and timescales. The main output of this grant, the monograph PREGNANCY AND THE NOVEL, will now be called THE PREGNANCY QUESTION AND THE NOVEL, a change of title that my publishers requested. This will reach an international audience and achieve significant academic impact through its open access publication, thereby making a demonstrable contribution to society and the economy. Offshoots of this monograph, developed into shorter pieces of writing, conference presentations, and workshops, will reach diverse audiences in the two years after the grant period finishes. A public engagement activity that arose early in the grant period (the 'SWW DTP PhD Student Residency Culminating in Pop-Up Exhibition, British School at Rome') demonstrates the impact of the research on creative outputs of AHRC-funded PhD students, who in turn impacted the public. Emerging economic and societal impact arising from the award is linked to future activities connected with my monograph that will directly impact the quality of life, health and well-being of medics who deal with concealed pregnancy and its potentially tragic outcomes in their daily work, helping them to find their own means of creative expression for their experiences. Since I last reported, I have undertaken more work on the public engagement materials that I have entitled 'Reading and Writing Pregnancy'. These will appear in the final chapter of my open access monograph, and were commended by one of the publisher's clearance reviewers. The reviewer felt that the materials offered 'a genuinely insightful opportunity to understand the historical and literary issues regarding pregnancy and relate them to the ongoing crisis in women's reproductive health, as well as to the difficulties involved in writing about medical matters whilst balancing multiple perspectives'. These materials continue to be an important tool that I will use in multiple ways to generate impact, and I have been mindful of the need to keep the prompts and exercises I created clear, streamlined, and sensitive to all those who will interact with them. One challenge I continue to need to overcome to achieve impact arises from a delay in my project website going live, as the website will be an important means of reaching a wider audience and disseminating my outcomes. The delay has been unavoidable, and arises from my University's major undertaking of moving all of our IT systems and Internet sites to a new platform, and continued heavy demands on my IT colleagues in the wake of this move. This IT project began just as my award commenced, but the major work has been completed, so I will soon receive assistance in creating a website that will be hosted on an excellent platform. There is an unforeseen benefit to this alteration of my timing. By the time the website goes live, my research outcomes will be more developed and polished, and my open access monograph available, which will enable me to achieve impact with greater power and clarity. Those who access and interact with the materials on the project website will have a richer experience and encounter better-developed tools and resources.
First Year Of Impact 2023
Sector Creative Economy,Education,Healthcare
Impact Types Cultural

Societal

Economic
 
Description SWW DTP PhD Residency Culminating in Pop-Up Exhibition, British School at Rome 
Form Of Engagement Activity Participation in an activity, workshop or similar
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach International
Primary Audience Postgraduate students
Results and Impact From 27 February to 4 March 2023, 14 PhD students funded by the AHRC's South West and Wales Doctoral Training Partnership were mentored by four members of academic staff from different institutions and disciplines to participate in a residency at the British School at Rome. The residency comprised workshops led by myself and the three other academic participants, drawing on our own current research and the BSR's resources to guide the students through a series of engagement activities. The aim was to encourage the students' creative interactions with and aesthetic responses to the city of Rome. In my case, I led a creative writing workshop that emerged from the early research I was doing as part of this award, raising questions about representing and concealing the human body, particularly in response to the visual art that we encountered in museums. These diverse activities culminated in a multi-genre, multi-media, collaborative pop-up exhibition which the students worked together to produce under the guidance of the academic staff. The exhibition showcased new work that the students created during the residency. The pop-up exhibition included creative writing, sound installations, new musical compositions, visual displays, works of visual art, film, spoken word, and performance. It took place in the BSR's gallery on Saturday, 4 March and was attended by 75-100 guests, who included members of the local community as well as BSR staff and BSR artists in residence.

In their post-residency feedback, students reflected that the residency, workshops and final exhibition had resulted in rich directions for their research and creative practice. Many of them stated they had discovered new methods of working and ways of seeing their processes and outputs. Many drew on genres they hadn't before considered and developed practical skills they had never before used. The intensity of collaboration with senior academics and student-colleagues they hadn't previously worked with, the need for adaptability in an exciting and stimulating but sometimes challenging new environment, the imminent deadline in front of them -- these factors coalesced to help participants towards new discoveries. Students reflected that their experiences during the residency would impact not only their immediate doctoral work but also continue to resonate beyond their PhDs, taking them forward with their continued creative, academic and professional development. The interest, enthusiasm and encouragement shown by members of the public and BSR staff and artists in residence for the pop-up exhibition enabled the students to experience an immediate response to what they had created, engage in real time with exhibition attendees who encountered the newly-produced artefacts, and take note of the ways their intentions were realised or departed from their original intentions.

Students also reflected in their feedback that the process of creation and final artefacts had resulted in exciting outcomes and impacts that they had not foreseen, and that the new creative techniques, approaches, methods and practices they encountered helped them generally with project management and specifically with the building of new pathways. Students also commented that they had implemented new creative methods and applied them in their PhD research and writing. Others put the experiences they gained during the residency into practice in different contexts, for instance in professional placements, so that the new knowledge and skills they developed went far beyond the act of researching and writing their PhD theses.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2023