Popular culture has long thrown doubt on the idea that women can be both productive and reproductive at the same time.
Although the critical task of raising and providing for a family should, in theory, foster solidarity, this has not historically proven the case. ‘Laboring Mothers: Reproducing Women and Work in the Eighteenth Century‘ (2023) demonstrates how contemporary associations surrounding economic status, race, and working motherhood have their roots in an antiquated and rigid system of inequality among women that dates back to the Enlightenment.
In this talk, Professor Ellen Ledoux will share her research into the role of working mothers in the long eighteenth century.
A link to the Zoom Webinar will be sent out upon registration. Participants will not be visible. We invite you to ask questions using the Q&A function. A recording will be circulated to all attendees after the event.
Ellen Malenas Ledoux is Associate Professor of English and Communication at Rutgers University – Camden, New Jersey, and the author of Social Reform in Gothic Writing: Fantastic Forms of Change, 1764–1834 (Palgrave Macmillan, 2013).
Image: William Hogarth, The Enraged Musician, 1741