Amy Wilson
This paper was given at the British Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies Conference at St. Hugh’s College Oxford in January 2024
In early modern England maternal bodies were a routine sight in the public landscape. Yet this is rarely represented in public history, in museums, films or academia. By overlooking the prevalence of pregnancy in the eighteenth century we risk misunderstanding what women of the past looked like, how their bodies were shaped and how their clothes were designed. My analysis of clothing for pregnancy provides new information about the appearance and the lived experiences of elite pregnant women in the past.
For most royal and aristocratic women, pregnancy accounted for an average combined total of 9 years of their adult lives.[1] However, what is more, their pregnancies were an example of statecraft with powerful stakeholders. Politics, influence, and money were involved in the pregnancies of these public figures and their progress was watched by a national audience.
Provided the mother’s health was good, elite Georgian women did not typically begin a confinement until the final weeks of gestation.[2] Meaning that visibly pregnant women enjoyed busy lives of duty and leisure in pleasure gardens and private parties, at court and in theatres, in assembly rooms and public galleries. Their choice in maternal costume was a form of agency and a mode of communication about their rank and reproductive status. This paper will consider; What did pregnant women of the ruling class wear at times of duty and leisure? How did they wear it? and what were the political, practical, and cultural motives behind their maternal sartorial choices?
Pregnancy and Elite Fashions for Leisure
A key hypothesis of my research is that the sartorial desires and requirements of elite pregnant women influenced mainstream fashions in Georgian England.
We might think of fashion leadership as something incongruous, perhaps even incompatible with pregnancy today. In Georgian England those with the freedom and money to dress in new and inventive ways, a cohort Hannah Greig has identified as the Beau Monde, were typically members of the ruling class.[3] The women of the Beau Monde used costume as a form of expression, communication, and political capital. These women achieved influence and power, in part, through the careful planning and management of their personal appearance and public profile. Meanwhile, these same elite women were coveted by wealth families for their reproductive potential. They performed the essential service of bearing children to ensure smooth succession within powerful families. This group of elite women simultaneously embodied the roles of mother, political player, and influential fashion icon. Someone who balanced these three roles with particular notoriety was the Duchess of Devonshire.
When pregnant in the 1770s and 80s Georgiana Duchess of Devonshire used the changed proportions and shape of her body as an opportunity to be experimental and imaginative in her clothing choices.[4] The duchess toyed with clothing and cultural expectations of pregnant women. She used optical illusion, her knowledge of proportion and scale and the principles of ‘true taste’ to manage how others perceived her maternal body. Her clothing for pregnancy demonstrated invention, knowledge, and wit.[5] She recognised that the aesthetic ideals of the line of beauty could be observed throughout the curvaceous maternal form. While yards more silk and precious fabric could be allocated to swathing the gravid body. The duchess’s talent and labour designing and promoting new styles of dress was instrumental in progressing fashions in the second half of the eighteenth century including while she was pregnant.[6]
A 1783 portrait by Gainsborough shows the duchess when 5 months pregnant wearing a champagne-coloured wrapping gown.[7] The soft rounded shape of the duchess’s body gives a hint to her pregnancy. Earlier in the century wrapping gowns would only ever be seen in the home; yet in this portrait one is worn as half-dress for semi-formal daytime use.[8] The soft nature of this outfit was comfortable and practical for wear during pregnancy while the green sash draws the eye to the narrowest part of the duchess’s waist. The softer shape of the duchess’s torso suggests that she is wearing her wrapping gown without stays. She may be wearing a pair of jumps which were informal and less structured than stays. Jumps afforded light support to the torso but could not create the fashionable silhouette typical of elite dress at this time.[9] Several pregnant portraits from around this time feature the subject wearing wrapping gowns similar to this.[10] Made from yards and yards of silk or luxury fabrics a wrapping gown was a signifier of wealth as well as being practical, it could be adjusted to accommodate a growing maternal body.
In the 1785 print Vaux-Hall by Robert Pollard the duchess is depicted at about seven months pregnant and her costume is somewhat unusual.[11] She is wearing a white chemise day gown as evening wear, but her petticoat is unnaturally wide suggesting support by bell-shaped hoops. A wide sash raises the waistline to just below the bust. This is a very early depiction of a high-waisted gown, possibly pushed into position by her maternal belly, or designed to accommodate it. I suggest that the duchess chose to break several sartorial conventions to better suit her pregnant body. Other characters in the scene direct their glance towards the duchess. Her costume choices attracted attention and satire throughout her married life, but as a wealthy and influential public figure she was granted sartorial licence and consequently her impact was substantial.
The robe en chemise featured in a number of portraits by Elizabeth Vigee Le Brun from 1780 onwards, however, this style of dress did not reach vast audiences or assume great popularity until it was worn by Marie Antoinette while she was pregnant in 1783.[12] Madam Le Brun’s painting of the Queen of France was controversial at first, but the light-weight fabric of the chemise gown, the drawstring neckline and large sash belt made cool, comfortable and easily adaptable maternal clothing.[13] This style of gown could be worn with a pair of stays or less structured jumps and produced a light and natural look. It is thought that the fashion arrived in England via the Queen’s relationship with the Duchess of Devonshire. It is recorded that in 1784 the Duchess attended a concert wearing ‘one of the muslin chemiseswith fine lace that the Queen of France gave me’.[14] According to the Lady’s Magazine by 1787 the chemise was being worn in England by all women ‘from ages 15 to 50’.[15] The dissemination of the chemise gown from the elite ladies of France to the masses of Britain took a remarkably short four years. A testament to consumer culture, social emulation, busy communication networks and journalism. It is via these means that the fashion of the robe en chemise can be charted from the maternal body of one iconic woman to the linen press in most homes of middle ranking Britain.
The robe en chemise fitted well with the arcadian aesthetic which grew in popularity as the eighteenth century progressed. This style of dress appropriated from agricultural labourers represented the ideals of natural beauty, strong health, and cleanliness.[16] Accoucheurs encouraged their wealthy patients to follow an antenatal lifestyle which encompassed these qualities. It was even said that agricultural workers gave birth in a way that was quicker and easier than their city dwelling social superiors.[17] The unadulterated appearance of pastoral dress signalled probity, honesty and clean-living. Pastoral fashion was a virtuous and moral style of dress for an enlightened age which championed the ideals of the natural child and aligned with sentimental models of motherhood. At a time when, according to Lisa Foreman Cody, pregnancy was an ‘aesthetic, cultural and political ideal’, women could use pastoral dress as part of their performative mothering.[18]
The 1720s portrait of the Duchess of Queensberry sees the socialite duchess wearing a cap and apron over a yellow silk gown of a simple design. In the background, we see a herd of cows and a milk pail.[19] The duchess was known for wearing an apron in formal and elite social spaces and she bore two children in the 1720s.[20] The duchess’s pastoral style was reasonably early, some sixty years before Marie Antoinette’s Hamlet was built at Versailles.[21] In the 1720s the apron already had an established associated with antenatal dress which dated at least to the 1660s.[22] Pastoral fashions connected a bountiful population of fertile young mothers and the bounty of the harvest. Fertile fields and wombs were seen in parallel, and the overarching message was of a flourishing nation with the capacity to grow in prosperity, strength and number.
In 1769 while pregnant Queen Charlotte wore an English night gown and white apron and ordered her ladies to wear the same.[23] Pastoral dress included light, loose fabrics, an apron which could be strategically tied to cover a growing abdomen, a pair of quilted jumps or a fitted jacket gave better physical comfortable. This less structured style was more compatible with breastfeeding. Pastoral dress was adaptable and practical clothing for a growing and changing maternal body.
This evidence reveals maternity at the heart of the pastoral aesthetic and brings new practical, medical and cultural meaning to this style of dress.
The Duty of Pregnancy and the Duty of Court
Queen Charlotte experienced at least 16 pregnancies between 1761 and 1783. As such she spent 35 per cent of her married life either pregnant or in immediate post-partum recovery.[24] While the Queen’s reproductive achievements are acknowledged, the presence of her maternal body at the centre of the Georgian court is rarely recognised. For such a crucial feature of the court’s performance, pregnancies and maternal experiences should be, but are not, at the core of understanding Georgian power and politics – too often they are condemned to life among the footnotes.
My research demonstrates that reproductive bodies were in fact a routine sight at court. For example, in January 1782 Mary Robinson, Baroness Grantham felt obliged to attend court six weeks after giving birth. She had begun some post-partum socialising with friends therefore it was expected that she should be back at court.[25] Lady Huntingdon was also a few weeks post-partum when she attended the birthday ball of Prince Frederick in 1738. Her heavy dress with metallic detail was criticised as decorated in a way that would have been more appropriate for a ‘stucco staircase than the apparel of a lady’. Mrs Delany described Lady Huntingdon as, ‘a mere shadow that tottered under every step she took under the load’.[26] It seems likely from the description that although lady Huntingdon had recently given birth, she attended this royal ball wearing a gown which was physically heavy and elaborate, quite probably a hooped mantua. At a few weeks post-partum, it is probable that both Baroness Grantham and Lady Huntingdon would have been experiencing lochia bleeding, a weakened pelvic floor, healing skin around the vulva and possibly also lactation all while wearing court dress and in the presence of the Royal Family. These sources and others like them suggest that postpartum women were not only present at court, but that they complied with the mandatory dress code including a mantua gown, hoops, stays, and heavy embellishments.[27] Augusta, Princess of Wales was five months pregnant when she attended the birthday ball of her husband the Prince of Wales in 1739. Mrs Delaney described her costume in detail, the princess wore; ‘white satin, the petticoat covered with gold trimming like embroidery, faced and robed with the same, her head and stomacher a rock of diamonds and pearls’.[28] The description of the princess’s rock-like stomacher makes no reference at all to the 5 month pregnant body which lay beneath.
A mantua gown for wear at court could span up to three metres in width and weigh 15 lbs or more.[29] Hannah Greig has shown that this style of dress was designed to display wealth and met with the approval of key members of the royal family, but could be cumbersome and awkward to wear.[30] Ladies practiced and received tutelage to move, curtsey and dance while wearing a court gown. In 1764 Mrs Montagu provided an unflattering description of a royal ball where everyone was ‘expiring under a load of finery’.[31] In April 1792 lady Lavinia Spencer was about 5 months pregnant and at court. She described in vivid detail the discomfort she experienced; ‘oh! oh! oh! my hips! My feet! My head! … court was fuller than a birthday and lasted an eternity’.[32] Court costume was particularly cumbersome for a maternal or post-partum body when the body is heavier and larger, the centre of gravity is changed, the gait and arch of the lower back is different.
Here are some of the practicalities of dressing a pregnant body in court dress. The gown, stomacher and petticoat were typically pinned and tied in to place with jewels and other embellishments added on top.[33] This style of clothing could be adapted easily to fit a changing body shape. However, the right foundation garments were vital to support such elaborate outerwear, and this was all the more important during pregnancy. Maternity stays with laced panels in the side seams supported court gowns on top and maternal bodies underneath.[34] Stays provided a firm base for the pinning and positioning of a mantua gown. They provided strong anchor points for pinning heavy jewels and embellishments. The tabs splayed over the hips and redistributed the weight of heavy fabric on top of panniers. Meanwhile underneath stays brought support and comfort to the maternal body. Stays reenforced the lower back, which is prone to overarching in later pregnancy, they could also support the weight of larger breasts and belly, they relieve pressure on the lower torso and the pelvis. Postpartum, stays helped the stomach muscles knit back together again reducing the size of the abdomen.
Attendance at royal events was of sufficient importance that the discomforts of pregnancy were tolerated in exchange for personal and family advancement. Display of the pregnant body broadcast to the court the reproductive achievements of a powerful couple. Court dress demonstrated status and a willingness to honour and support the crown and country.[36] In this way, maternity stays served an unexpectedly pivotal function as they enabled women to continue wearing court dress and maintain court attendance throughout pregnancy. In this way a pair of maternity stays facilitated elite women to retain their place in influential spaces and to advance their political endeavours all while displaying their dynastically and politically significant pregnant body.[37]
Today I have demonstrated that pregnant women could be seen in public spaces in eighteenth century England, and higher rates of pregnancy meant that women’s bodies routinely looked pregnant or post-partum. I have shown that in places of leisure elite fashions including the robe en chemise and pastoral styles of dress had a substantial links with pregnancy. I suggest that this is in part due to practical, medical, and cultural qualities that were thought of benefit to the pregnant wearer. I have demonstrated that the Georgian court’s complex codes of appearance demanded awkwardly shaped court dress as exhibited symbols of status, power and security. Women maintained their presence in this space of power and influence while pregnant, despite the sartorial obstacles, because it was a central arena for personal and family advancement. Court costume was intended to signify financial stability and power and the maternal body signified reproductive success. A courtiers’ capability to align the physical changes of pregnancy with their political and strategic ambitions could be communicated by their choice of clothing.
[1] Edward Anthony Wrigley and Roger S Schofield, The Population History of England: 1541-1871, a Reconstruction (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), p. 254.
[2] For example, in 1805 Lady Churchill attended the opera and dined out regularly, she stopped only two weeks before birth. Judith Schneid Lewis, In the Family Way: Childbearing in the British Aristocracy, 1760-1860 (New Brunswick and New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 1986), p. 124.
[3] Hannah Greig, The Beau Monde: Fashionable Society in Georgian England (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), p. 32.
[4] Morning Chronicle, 31 March 1806, as quoted in Ananda Foreman, Georgiana Duchess of Devonshire (London: Harper Collins, 1999), p. 391.
[5] Foreman, Georgiana, p.121.
[6] Foreman, Georgiana, p. 22.
[7] Thomas Gainsborough, Georgiana Duchess of Devonshire, 1783, oil on canvas, National Gallery of Art, USA, 1937.1.93.
[8] Anna Reynolds, Style and Society: Dressing the Georgians (London: Royal Collection Trust, 2023), p. 76. Also, Aileen Ribeiro, Dress in Eighteenth Century Europe 1715-1789 (London: Batford Books, 1984), p. 155.
[9] Jordan Mitchell-King, ‘Women’s Jumps and Quilted Waistcoats in the Eighteenth-Century: Production, Consumption and Mediation’(unpublished MA thesis, Royal College of Art, 2021).
[10] Such as: Thomas Gainsborough, Mrs Siddens, 1785, oil on canvas, National Gallery London, NG683.
[11] Robert Pollard, Vaux-Hall, June 1785, print, British Museum, 1880,1113.5484.
[12] Elizabeth Louise Vigee Le Brun, Marie Antoinette, 1783, oil on canvas, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
[13] Ribeiro, Dress, p. 153.
[14] Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire, to Lady Spencer, Devonshire MSS, 19 February 1785, cs5/667, Chatsworth.
[15] Lady’s Magazine, 1787, p. 311. Quoted in Ribeiro, Dress in Eighteenth Century, p. 228.
[16] John Styles, The Dress of the People, Everyday Fashion in Eighteenth Century England (London and New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007), p. 193.
[17] Thomas Denman, Aphorisms on the Application and Use of the Forceps and Vectis (Philadelphia: Benjamin Johnson, 1803), p. 233.
[18] Lisa Forman Cody, Birthing the Nation: Sex, Science and the Conception of Eighteenth Century Britain (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), p. 306.
[19] After Charles Jervas, Duchess of Queensberry, 1720, oil on canvas, Historic England Archive.
[20] Elizabeth Spencer, ‘None but Abigails appeared in white aprons’: The Apron as an Elite Garment in Eighteenth-Century England, in Textile History, 49 (2), pp. 164-190.
[21] Kimberly Chrisman-Campbell, Fashion Victims: Dress at the Court of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2015), p. 177.
[22] Linda Baumgarten, What Clothes Reveal: The Language of Clothing in Colonial and Federal America: The Colonial Williamsburg Collection (Williamsburg: Colonial Williamsburg Foundation in Association with Yale University Press, 2002), pp. 151-152.
[23] Lady Mary Coke, The Letters and Journals of Lady Mary Coke, 1889-96, III, p. 68. As quoted in Anne Buck, Dress in Eighteenth Century England (London: B. T. Batsford Ltd., 1976), p. 22.
[24] This calculation is arrived at by taking the 16 pregnancies on record for the Queen. Each pregnancy is represented by 9 months of gestation and 3 months of postpartum recovery. A combined total number of ‘months of maternity’ was then divided by the duration (in months) of the Queen’s married life and expressed as a percentage. The total is adjusted to allow for one known miscarriage.
[25] Letter from Mary Robinson to Marchioness Grey, BRO, WPP, L30/9/81/34, 21st January 1782.
[26] Mrs Delany The Autobiography and Correspondence of Mary Granville ed. by Lady Llandover (London: 1861), vol 2, p. 28.
[27] Buck, Dress, p. 13-24.
[28] Mrs Delany, vol. 2, p. 297.
[29] Mantua gown, 1755-60, silk linen and brocade, V&A Museum London, T. 592 1 1993.
[30] Hannah Grieg, ‘Faction and Fashion: The politics of Court Dress in Eighteenth Century England in Apparence(s)’, Histoire et Culture du Paraitre, 6, 2015. http://doi.org/10.4000/apparences.1311
[31] Mrs Montagu, Her Letters and Friendships ed. by R. Blunt (1923), vol. 1, p. 96.
[32] Letter from Lady Lavinia Spencer, Althorp Papers, British Library, MSS, 75928, 19th April 1792.
[33] Emma O’Toole, ‘Dressing the Expectant Mother: Maternity Fashion in Eighteenth and Early Nineteenth Century Ireland’, Women’s History,5, (2016), 26-33.
[34] For example, maternity stays, 1760-80, Private Collection of Jean and Pawel Nowak.
[36] Buck, Dress and Hannah Smith, Georgian Monarchy: Politics and Culture 1715-60 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006).
[37] Karen Hearn, Portraying Pregnancy: From Holbein to Social Media (London: Paul Holberton Publishing in Association with the Foundling Museum, 2019), p. 99.
Amy Wilson 