Dangerous Motherhood

'Dangerous Motherhood is a tour de force of scholarship, which exploits a wide range of little-tapped sources to bring the poignant case histories of manic and depressed women to life. Marland fastidiously delineates the ambivalent attempts of Victorian obstetricians, asylum doctors, and general practitioners, as well as of families and husbands, to understand, classify and respond to the often bizarre and disturbing behaviour of these women. In doing so, she charts the veritable creation of a new female malady - 'puerperal insanity' - a 'dangerous' (if normally transient) affliction that not only transgressed the norms and expectations surrounding motherhood, but threatened the very integrity of the Victorian household.' - Dr Jonathan Andrews, Department of History, Oxford Brookes University

'Using a wealth of asylum records, case notes, diaries and medical texts, Hilary Marland's scholarly book, Dangerous Motherhood, provides a rich window into some of the anguish puerperal insanity could inflict on women and their families, and the variety of ways medical practitioners explained its cause and sought to treat it. Dangerous Motherhood not only provides a vivid study of the specific Victorian conditions that led to the rise and fall in the fascination of puerperal insanity, but a powerful insight into the relationships between doctors, patients and their families in this period.' - Medical History

'The variety and volume of primary source material that Marland consults in her history of puerperal insanity, from its conception in the early nineteenth century through to its demise in the early twentieth, leads to a wide-ranging and richly evidenced discussion of its cause, treatment and outcome.' - Beth Wright, Women: A Cultural Review