Corinna Wagner's lively Pathological Bodies: Medicine and Political Culture covers an impressive array of topics, drawing on both visual and textual genres published at the end of the eighteenth century and the first decades of the nineteenth. Its style is refreshingly lucid, and its fundamental argument is persuasive: the links between medicine and politics have often been overlooked, yet they remain crucially important. I particularly appreciate Wagner's approach to the sources discussed: she marries historicism and literary close reading skills with great results.
Wagner puts forward a particularly convincing argument in the chapter that focuses on the figure of Marie Antoinette. While she was made the paragon of female virtue in Edmund Burke's Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790), the queen was also reviled as a sexual deviant in numerous texts and accused of being a pedophile at her trial. Wagner has found a broad range of sources with which to build her case, from pamphlets such as “The Uterine Furors of Marie-Antoinette” to pornographic works, such as “The Royal Dildo,” and so-called medical texts, such as “Nymphomania; or, A Dissertation Concerning the Furor Uterinus.” It is both striking and compelling that so many visual sources are used, such as, in this instance, a satirical print called “Bravo, Bravo! la Reine se penetre de la Patrie.” Wagner considers all closely, with valuable attention to detail, and she uses all to support the point being made: women's bodies are being categorized in these texts as “pathological.” British writers, influenced by their peers on the Continent, put forward an idea of “biological incommensurability.” That is, by virtue of such monstrous examples as Marie Antoinette, women were portrayed as essentially, physically different from men, and this difference determined the way that women were judged in terms of their characters, morals, and capabilities.
There are other excellent sections in the book, such as that on mothers and breastfeeding. French mothers were viewed in Britain as unnatural, producing equally unnatural children. Wagner discusses with a new, fresh perspective the belief in the period that the mother's imagination was responsible for any physical abnormalities found in her babies’ bodies. This section benefits from the fund of stories Wagner has found on such subjects and which are given as supposed medical case studies. Again and again, evidence is marshalled to prove that the body was thought to be fixed and immutable, and responsible for human nature, character, and morals.
This book does not only recover new material for consideration; it also informs. Less than 5 percent of French mothers breastfed their children before the French Revolution, but after the National Convention dictated that only breastfeeding mothers were eligible for full state funding, this figure rose. Wet nurses were less able to conceive than were the well-to-do women who employed them because the suppression of the latters’ breast milk did not have the usual contraceptive effect upon their reproductive abilities. Wagner describes the breast as the “source of woman's political power” (59). This power could be seen as negative; the mother's breast could rear equally monstrous and revolutionary offspring. Wagner also notes that breastfeeding was used to exclude women from the political sphere. Here again, gendered biological difference was used to promote distinct political and domestic roles. I enjoyed moments when Wagner brings us up to date, such as the brief section that looks at the way that both supporters and enemies have used Hillary Clinton's body in the last twenty years for political purposes.
Pathological Bodies makes it clear how often political figures were judged on their perceived bodily strengths or weaknesses. Charles James Fox, in the 1793 William Dent print “A Right Hon. Democrat Dissected,” is held to represent the conventional picture of the Whig party: he is ruled by his groin rather than his head or heart. Conversely, in the anonymous “A Dissection” (1797), the genitals of Tory prime minister William Pitt are labeled “immaculate,” alleging his sexual frigidity and emotional detachment, which can both be found in his political dealings. Wagner's book recovers ephemera such as vulgar satires in newspapers and periodicals. She considers how William Godwin was paradoxically seen as both sexually immoral and frigid, and fruitfully compares figures as seemingly incongruous as Godwin and the Marquis de Sade. The book can be used for teaching purposes and to lead on to multiple other research projects. Its reflections on gothic narratives involving medical students published in the Dublin University Magazine, the New Monthly Magazine, and Blackwood's may well set other, new ideas in train.
This book ranges over diverse, sometimes scandalous, but always interesting material: masturbation, personal hygiene, sodomy, anatomical and specifically genital monstrosity, obesity, vegetarianism, and many other topics. It shows how medicalized rhetoric added edge to debates on all these subjects, which in turn found their place as part of larger political battles. Its personal case study approach works well: the book considers crucial figures for the period such as Maria Antoinette, Thomas Paine, Mary Wollstonecraft as depicted by William Godwin, and King George IV. In fact, the book's many concerns are gathered together by its end in the body of the ageing, obese, gout-ridden, and largely reclusive king. I found it endlessly fascinating and hugely compelling.
