ABSTRACT

This article considers how questions of reproduction and population intersect with issues of working-class motherhood in Elizabeth Gaskell's 1848 social problem novel Mary Barton — specifically regarding representations of abortion and women's reproductive health. Women’s ability to successfully perform maternity, especially for multiple children, often correlated with their socioeconomic status, as a working-class woman’s financial resources proved more limiting than those of her middle-class contemporaries. The possibility of multiple unplanned pregnancies for working-class women thus positioned maternity as a potential burden and source of anxiety. With a specific eye toward the historically classed associations behind herb gardens, midwifery, and access to different forms of medicine, the following essay illuminates abortion’s implicit yet critical place in the novel and how the subject, as a present-absence, informs the text’s treatment of population and concerns about social inequality.

摘要

本文探讨了伊丽莎白·加斯克尔 (Elizabeth Gaskell) 1848 年的社会问题小说玛丽·巴顿(Mary Barton ) 中的再生产和人口问题如何与工人阶级的母性问题交织在一起- 特别是关于堕胎和妇女生殖健康的陈述。妇女成功生育的能力，尤其是生育多个孩子的能力，通常与她们的社会经济地位相关，因为事实证明，工薪阶层妇女的经济资源比同时代的中产阶级妇女更为有限。因此，工薪阶层女性多次意外怀孕的可能性将生育定位为潜在的负担和焦虑源。着眼于药草园、助产士和获得不同形式的药物背后的历史分类关联，以下文章阐明了堕胎在小说中隐含但又至关重要的地位，以及这个主题作为现在不在场如何影响文本的处理人口和对社会不平等的担忧。