Maternity Misplaced: The Infanticidal Mother Archetype in Fin-de-Siècle Australia and France [CASS uploaded]

Abstract

In fin-de-siècle Australia and France, the public had recourse to an archetype that reconciled the 'unnatural' yet prevalent practice of infanticide with pronatalist anxieties and fears about changing gender divisions. By examining newspaper reports and fictional serials across the political spectrum, I reveal that the 'infanticidal mother' archetype worked to affirm, rather than challenge, contemporary ideals of motherhood. Journalists saw most infanticidal women as having 'misplaced', rather than lost, their maternal instinct; in so doing, they made these women redeemable after their 'slip into sin', linked their wellbeing directly to their mothering potential and dismissed the harrowing rationality of infanticide. The archetype could also be adapted to highlight political (counter)points, with feminists expressing utopian hopes and conservatives deriding a corrupting modernity. Previous histories situate infanticide within discussions of birth control or crimes of passion, yet commentators in both countries saw infanticide as different and distinctive. Taking a comparative approach underlines the infanticidal mother's unique cultural weight as both Australia and France drew on similar discursive scaffolding to produce and enforce an ideal of motherhood. These distant countries even occasionally looked to each other in their discussions of infanticide. By examining 'good', 'mad' and 'bad' infanticidal mothers, we see how the archetype neutralised threats to gender norms and, by extension, to the nation-state itself. Show more