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Authors: Jo Eldridge Carney
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but to no avail. Eventually, she was able to conceive but all three times she suffered miscarriages.
After one such visit Catherine became feverishly ill and from her sickbed spoke deliriously of the three children she believed she had delivered. The prolific diarist Samuel Pepys recorded his version of the story: “The Queen’s delirium in her head continues still, that this morning she talked mightily that she was brought to bed, and that she wondered that she should be delivered without pain and without spueing or being sick, and that she was troubled that her boy was but an ugly boy. But the King being by, said, ‘No, it is a very pretty boy.’ ” 101 Charles and Catherine’s attendants repeatedly reassured her that she had given birth to a healthy boy. We have no record of Catherine’s reaction when she recovered and learned the truth, but the sadness that accompanied her childlessness troubled the rest of her life. In d’Aulnoy’s “The Wild Boar,” the queen gives birth to a little pig. When he is born, “Everybody shrieked, which frightened the queen very much. She asked what was the matter, but they did not wish to tell her for fear she should die of grief. So, on the contrary, they assured her that she was the mother of a fine boy and that she had cause for rejoicing.” The false assurances given to d’Aulnoy’s queen as well as to Catherine of Braganza were meant to protect them, but they also encouraged the large web of misinformation and fear that accompanied the royal childbirth experience.
Against the fertility challenges of early modern queens, the longing for a child, which was expressed so fervently and frequently in fairy tales, reveals itself as a historical marker. Although both the king and the queen may desire an heir, the burden of worry and responsibility for conception and delivery was primarily the queen’s. At the same time, because of her duty to the body politic, the queen’s reproductive experiences were never private. In a sense, her body was shared by the whole kingdom, a point Henry made clear in a comment to the Duke of Norfolk about his third queen, Jane Seymour. The queen’s pregnancy, Henry boasted, was a “thing of that quality, as every good English man will think himself to have a part in the same.” 102
CHAPTER 3
MATERNAL MONSTROSITIES: QUEENS AND THE REPRODUCTION OF HEIRS AND ERRORS
“He is so ugly that I am ashamed of him.”
—Queen Henrietta Maria of England upon visiting her infant son James in his nursery
“So there he was, father of three of the most frightening and ugly creatures in his kingdom. He said to his queen that they had better leave it at that, for he did not want to populate the earth with monsters.”
—Henriette de Murat, “The Savage”
“Once upon a time there was a queen who gave birth to a son so ugly and so misshapen that for a long time it was doubtful whether he possessed a human form.”
—Charles Perrault, “Riquet with the Tuft”
“When the cunning queen mother saw her son approaching the palace, she went to meet him and told him that his dear wife had given birth to three mongrel pups instead of three children.”
—Straparola, “Ancilotto, King of Provino”
Although both of Mary Tudor’s assumed pregnancies turned out to be false, stories still circulated that she had delivered a “shapeless mass.” More egregious rumors claimed that the fetus was a lapdog or a marmot. It was acknowledged misfortune enough that queens, like all women, could miscarry, deliver stillborns, or even give birth to a daughter rather than the son who would provide dynastic security. But there was also a fear manifest at every level of society that mothers—and especially queens—could produce even more imperfect offspring. Likewise, early modern fairy tales abound in queens who deliver monstrous children.
The pregnancy-wish motif in fairy tales points to the overwhelming concern over fertility that early modern queens
After one such visit Catherine became feverishly ill and from her sickbed spoke deliriously of the three children she believed she had delivered. The prolific diarist Samuel Pepys recorded his version of the story: “The Queen’s delirium in her head continues still, that this morning she talked mightily that she was brought to bed, and that she wondered that she should be delivered without pain and without spueing or being sick, and that she was troubled that her boy was but an ugly boy. But the King being by, said, ‘No, it is a very pretty boy.’ ” 101 Charles and Catherine’s attendants repeatedly reassured her that she had given birth to a healthy boy. We have no record of Catherine’s reaction when she recovered and learned the truth, but the sadness that accompanied her childlessness troubled the rest of her life. In d’Aulnoy’s “The Wild Boar,” the queen gives birth to a little pig. When he is born, “Everybody shrieked, which frightened the queen very much. She asked what was the matter, but they did not wish to tell her for fear she should die of grief. So, on the contrary, they assured her that she was the mother of a fine boy and that she had cause for rejoicing.” The false assurances given to d’Aulnoy’s queen as well as to Catherine of Braganza were meant to protect them, but they also encouraged the large web of misinformation and fear that accompanied the royal childbirth experience.
Against the fertility challenges of early modern queens, the longing for a child, which was expressed so fervently and frequently in fairy tales, reveals itself as a historical marker. Although both the king and the queen may desire an heir, the burden of worry and responsibility for conception and delivery was primarily the queen’s. At the same time, because of her duty to the body politic, the queen’s reproductive experiences were never private. In a sense, her body was shared by the whole kingdom, a point Henry made clear in a comment to the Duke of Norfolk about his third queen, Jane Seymour. The queen’s pregnancy, Henry boasted, was a “thing of that quality, as every good English man will think himself to have a part in the same.” 102
CHAPTER 3
MATERNAL MONSTROSITIES: QUEENS AND THE REPRODUCTION OF HEIRS AND ERRORS
“He is so ugly that I am ashamed of him.”
—Queen Henrietta Maria of England upon visiting her infant son James in his nursery
“So there he was, father of three of the most frightening and ugly creatures in his kingdom. He said to his queen that they had better leave it at that, for he did not want to populate the earth with monsters.”
—Henriette de Murat, “The Savage”
“Once upon a time there was a queen who gave birth to a son so ugly and so misshapen that for a long time it was doubtful whether he possessed a human form.”
—Charles Perrault, “Riquet with the Tuft”
“When the cunning queen mother saw her son approaching the palace, she went to meet him and told him that his dear wife had given birth to three mongrel pups instead of three children.”
—Straparola, “Ancilotto, King of Provino”
Although both of Mary Tudor’s assumed pregnancies turned out to be false, stories still circulated that she had delivered a “shapeless mass.” More egregious rumors claimed that the fetus was a lapdog or a marmot. It was acknowledged misfortune enough that queens, like all women, could miscarry, deliver stillborns, or even give birth to a daughter rather than the son who would provide dynastic security. But there was also a fear manifest at every level of society that mothers—and especially queens—could produce even more imperfect offspring. Likewise, early modern fairy tales abound in queens who deliver monstrous children.
The pregnancy-wish motif in fairy tales points to the overwhelming concern over fertility that early modern queens
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