Beyond the Reproductive Body: The Politics of Women's Health and Work in Early Victorian England

Poor women in Victorian England were caught between contradictory expectations of the reproductive body, seen to preclude any but domestic labor, and the able body, which dictated that all poor but healthy people must work to stay independent. Levine-Clark (history, U. of Colorado, Denver) uses medical case narratives of poor women to explore the centrality of gender and the body in the formation of Victorian policies on employment, public health, and welfare as well as to challenge historians' …