This essay examines the theory of maternal impressions, the belief that a woman’s experiences or emotions during pregnancy could explain congenital disability or emotional/ behavior differences in her child and asks why this theory circulated as an explanation for disability seen at birth by both medical doctors and in literature for far longer than it did across the Atlantic. By presenting examples from nineteenth-century medical literature, popular fiction, maternal handbooks, and two canonical works of literature, Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter and Harriet Jacobs’ Incidents in the Life of a Slave, I argue that maternal impressions worked to maintain anxiety for women, and particular white women, to ensure they felt responsible if anything was “wrong” with their child. Ultimately, I show how maternal impressions was both an ableist and racialized understanding of inheritance that wouldn’t be discarded until the emergence of eugenics in the early twentieth century.

本文探讨了母亲印象理论，即女性在怀孕期间的经历或情绪可以解释她孩子的先天性残疾或情绪/行为差异的信念，并询问为什么该理论作为医生和医生在出生时看到的残疾的解释而广为流传。在文学领域的时间比横跨大西洋的时间要长得多。通过展示 19 世纪医学文学、通俗小说、母亲手册和两部经典文学作品中的例子，纳撒尼尔·霍桑的《红字》和哈丽雅特·雅各布斯的奴隶生活事件，我认为母亲的印象有助于保持女性，尤其是白人女性的焦虑，以确保他们在孩子出现任何“问题”时感到负责。最后，我展示了母性印象如何既是对遗传的能力主义又是种族化的理解，直到 20 世纪初优生学的出现才被抛弃。