ABSTRACT
As the womb was central to the seventeenth century’s physiological conception of woman (see chapters 2 and 3), so it was to social and religious thinking about women. Through marriage and childbirth, the curse on Eve (and woman) is reversed and, even if in a puzzling way, salvation becomes possible (106; cf. 79). There is something monstrous in a woman who does not wish to become a mother (107), still more in one who rejects her own child. Popular pamphleteering found an especial frisson of horror in the unnatural breaking of the mother/child bond (108; cf. 109: VI.§10). There is some evidence for the practice of contraception (107; Laslett (1983), p. 117; see generally on this subject Noonan (1965)), but it was universally condemned by medical and ecclesiastical authorities (Eccles (1982), p. 67); procured abortion was regarded as a heinous sin, akin to murder (109: VI.§9).
