ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the implications of women's epistemological control over the pregnant body in Ford's play and in midwifery treatises from the early Stuart period. It argues that midwifery treatises actually reveal the potency of female epistemological authority that is unleashed by the opacity of the pregnant body. In early modern midwifery treatises and Tis Pity She's a Whore; male authors and dramatic figures try to usurp women's interpretive authority by disassembling the female body and displaying its parts. Midwifery treatises offered readers a way to decipher the secrets of the female reproductive body's interior, presenting the female body as a vehicle through which men could view and consolidate their own socio-medical authority. Giovanni draws on the neo-platonic language of spiritual unity and oneness to incorporate his sister into himself and gain mastery over the social customs governing 'reason' and 'religion'. But these bonds are cemented and even legitimated through the physical connections of 'blood' and 'flesh'.
