Reproduction, Labor, Aesthetics. Breastfeeding and Literature in the Long Nineteenth Century

In recent years, practices of care, nursing, and compassion have increasingly become the focus of social and political discourse. While care work has also repeatedly taken centre stage in literature, it is not merely a literary subject. Activities such as childcare, housework, nursing, and comforting are also its essential prerequisites, though often overlooked. The project addresses this by focusing on breastfeeding—a central yet hitherto under-researched aspect of female caregiving—within German-language literature from 1789 to 1914. It also relates biological reproduction to the concepts of art and labor that emerged after 1800. This allows for a reconsideration of the relationship between physical reproduction and literary production.

The project examines the complex interplay between literary works and popular scientific texts on breastfeeding during the long 19th century. It stipulates that it is primarily literary texts that expose the fragility of a narrative presenting the “naturally” breastfeeding mother as the guarantor of the bourgeois family, while in many cases breastfeeding is actually not performed by the biological mother. Against this backdrop, the project studies the relationship between reproduction and work. Particular attention is given to the figure of the wet nurse, whose presence challenges the dominant narrative and unsettles the separation between (male) wage labor and (female) reproductive labor.

The focus of literary studies on fantasies of male creation that emerged around 1800 led to the connection between biological reproduction and aesthetic creativity in women’s literature being largely overlooked. Using the heuristic category of a “reproductive aesthetic,” this project argues that female authors, drawing on the reproductive role assigned to them in the discourse of their time—the procreation of children rather than works of art—develop an aesthetic that makes corporeality and practices of care the basis of literary creativity.

Fig. above: Alsatian textile design, 1840, source: The Met