ABSTRACT
Dobbie's characterization of Mother Nature "failing in her task" in the context of bumbling early modern midwives is, in itself, fodder for a rich discussion of gender and contemporary gynecological rhetoric about the past. Guillemeau's retelling of Hyginus is included at the beginning of Book II of his medical treatise, wherein he devotes 13 pages to the duties of midwives. Childbirth for women at the turn of the sixteenth century was at once life-giving and life-threatening; to bring children into the world was to put oneself in danger. The story becomes ever more lyrical, ecstatic, and erotic; the women of Athens are delivered from their "langueur" the illness induced by the privation of learning into a state of delirious contentment. Des Roches's experience is radically transformative of this notion of creativity as issuing from wounding or phallic penetration. It is a document created for feminist critic Susan Gubar's discovery and delectation.
