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Giving Birth and/to the New Science of Obstetrics: Fin-De-Siecle German Women Writers' Perceptions of the Birthing Experience

Wanske, Barbara Wonneken
http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1437424709

Abstract Details

2015, Doctor of Philosophy, Ohio State University, Germanic Languages and Literatures.
The end of the nineteenth century marked the slow shift from home births towards an increased hospitalization of birthing, which became a firmly established practice in twentieth-century German-speaking countries. In this project, I analyze and contextualize representations of birthing, birthing assistants, and the medicalization of the female body in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in Helene Boehlau’s Halbtier! (1899), Ilse Frapan’s Arbeit (1903), and Gabriele Reuter’s Das Traenenhaus (1908). Boehlau, Frapan, and Reuter wrote their novels at the cusp of a new approach to birthing, and their protagonists grapple with the transition from giving birth at home with minimal medical intervention to viewing birth as a pathological condition that requires support from medical personnel. By bringing together theoretical discourses on the body and on medicalization, I examine what effect the restructuring of birthing assistance, and later the development of the medical specialty of obstetrics, had on women in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and how women perceived these changed birthing conditions. I argue that each of these literary works challenges the medical history narratives that have portrayed medical advances in obstetrics as a positive change for women across the world. Rather, these works take up questions of female agency and the human cost resulting from medical advancements. I identify the three authors’ preoccupation with unwed mothers’ birthing experiences and the socio-economic and moral factors that influence their patient care and access to health care as a crucial commonality between the works examined. The project begins with a historical overview of the medicalization of birthing in German-speaking countries and of the changing discourses about the female procreative body from the 1750s onwards. The subsequent three literature chapters focus on the portrayal of women’s perceptions of the birthing experience, the locales in which women give birth (i.e. birthing clinic, rural birthing house, or at home), and birthing assistants and their interactions with each other and with their female patients. This approach enables me to compare how perceptions of these themes were mediated and represented in literary texts by multiple women writers in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The project concludes with a discussion of all three novels and what their representations of birthing can tell us about the broader issues the novels address.
Barbara Becker-Cantarino, PhD (Committee Co-Chair)
Katra Byram, PhD (Committee Co-Chair)
Anna Grotans, PhD (Committee Member)
242 p.
Germanic Literature
birthing; birthing assistance; German women writers; obstetrics; body; medicine; medical humanities; German literature; late nineteenth century; early twentieth century

Recommended Citations

Citations

  • Wanske, B. W. (2015). Giving Birth and/to the New Science of Obstetrics: Fin-De-Siecle German Women Writers' Perceptions of the Birthing Experience [Doctoral dissertation, Ohio State University]. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1437424709

    APA Style (7th edition)

  • Wanske, Barbara. Giving Birth and/to the New Science of Obstetrics: Fin-De-Siecle German Women Writers' Perceptions of the Birthing Experience. 2015. Ohio State University, Doctoral dissertation. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center, http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1437424709.

    MLA Style (8th edition)

  • Wanske, Barbara. "Giving Birth and/to the New Science of Obstetrics: Fin-De-Siecle German Women Writers' Perceptions of the Birthing Experience." Doctoral dissertation, Ohio State University, 2015. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1437424709

    Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition)

osu1437424709
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This open access ETD is published by The Ohio State University and OhioLINK.