Pregnant Fictions by Holly Tucker

Pregnant Fictions: Childbirth and the Fairy Tale in Early Modern France by Holly Tucker. Like new. Publisher‎: Wayne State University Press; 1st Printing edition (April 1, 2003). Hardcover‎, 232 pages. ISBN-10‎: 0814330428. ISBN-13‎: 978-0814330425.

How male medical authorities and female literary authors struggled to describe the inner workings of the unseen-and competed to shape public understanding of it-is the focus of this engaging work by Holly Tucker. In illuminating the gender politics underlying dramatic changes in reproductive theory and practice, Tucker shows just how tenuous the boundaries of scientific fact and marvelous fictions were in early-modern France.

On the literary front, Tucker argues, women used the fairy tale to rethink the biology of childbirth and the sociopolitical uses to which it had been put. She shows that in references to midwives, infertility, sex selection, and embryological theories, fairy-tale writers experimented with alternative ways of...