ABSTRACT

The outer dimensions of the middle-class woman’s life as homemaker lead us now to the intimate aspects of her life – to the inner woman. One of the most important features of this personal life was physical health. A woman’s life, more than a man’s, is marked dramatically by such physical developments as puberty, pregnancy and menopause. Yet we know virtually nothing about the health of the middle-class woman in the nineteenth century. Historians have either assumed a rather regular improvement, from the vantage point of definable advances in medical knowledge, or they have neglected key aspects of a woman’s life, such as pregnancy, assuming these are relative constants in the female experience and thus not susceptible to analysis. In the following chapters we will see that not only were there substantial changes in the personal health of women but also that middle-class women were the prime movers for these changes. The middle-class woman applied her new mentality to her personal life as well as to her role as homemaker, and in many instances with more success. In coping with her personal problems she demonstrated again an openness to change, a desire for rationalization and an effort, appropriate in a utilitarian century, to maximize pleasure and minimize pain. Through her efforts to gain control of her personal being, the middle-class woman was able to express most successfully her new self-image. Though the new mentality was most clearly visible in the field of health, it extended to related activities such as child-rearing and sexual enjoyment. Many strands of the new personal outlook united in the development of birth control, a familiar monument to the Victorian middle class which now requires reassessment as we see women as active moulders of their personal situation.