ABSTRACT
We begin with the body, a subject neglected by historians until comparatively recently. On the whole, historians have found the body of less interest than the mind, and have concentrated on the public sphere of human activity, relegating the body to the ‘private’ sphere. The history of women’s bodies has seemed fundamentally ahistorical, an account of childbearing and rearing. Reproduction, what women ‘naturally’ do, lacked historical interest. Furthermore, a postmodern focus on the discursive construction of experience has moved attention further away from women’s bodies. Yet being a woman was a biological as well as a cultural experience, as this section demonstrates. 1
