Obviously, children with such strange birth defects needed to be explained somehow, and, rather than scientifically accounting for a mishap in conception, individuals simply placed the blame on the mothers and assumed it was some outside cause that led to monstrous births. It is almost silly to me for them to think that the mothers possessed that much say in the outcome of their child's attributes. I suppose that when they first started happening that a reasonable way to explain them would be to assume the mother had done something, but I am surprised that it became such a steadfast belief. Granted, the Renaissance was steeped in mystical explanations and theories, so I suppose it is rational for them to believe that the the mind (of the mother in particular) had the capabilities of altering the state of her unborn child.
Nevertheless, I can't help but feel like people used it as an excuse to accuse women of particular acts (whether it be thinking pridefully or simply committing sins in the past) and to point out their faults through the birth of their children-- and as I already stated, there was a lot of propaganda surrounding these births, so when a defect was reported, the word spread quickly.
1 comment:
I agree. Monstrous births were exaggerated and exploited in these pamphlets, which were the Us Weekly and the People magazines of the day.
There are plenty of birth defects today from different bad things that a mother might do when she is pregnant, such as smoking or using a tanning bed. However, in the Renaissance there were probably many many things that women did without knowing that it would hurt their unborn child. However, the purpose of the pamphlets was to call out the women for doing bad things like opening their mouths when they should be quiet.
It must have been hard to be a woman in the Renaissance, especially if you had a child with a birth defect.
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