Labor, "Paines," and Social Disorder: Reading the Representation of Wet-nursing in Early Modern Sermons, A Chaste Maid in Cheapside, and Romeo and Juliet.

This article explores attitudes toward wet-nursing by drawing out the connections between prescription as laid out in "Puritan" sermons, representations in early modern English drama, and the practice of wet-nursing during the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, particularly in London. Puritan writers and clergymen including Elizabeth Clinton, William Gouge, and Henry Smith advocated for maternal breastfeeding and criticized wet-nursing by warning that the practice could threaten the long-term stability of the family. This discourse, and its related stereotypes about wet-nursing, surface in early modern drama through depictions of social disorder in William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet (c. 1596) and Thomas Middleton's A Chaste Maid in Cheapside (1613). There is also a brief discussion of Thomas Dekker and John Webster's Westward Ho (1605). Romeo and Juliet depicts an extended representation of concerns about the wet-nurse's influence over children: the Nurse's centrality to the narrative enacts precisely what Puritan literature warned against. The article situates these plays in conversation with wider concerns about the bonds created through wet-nursing. This study further demonstrates that depictions of wet-nursing in early modern texts, and its broader dramatic narratives, reveal anxieties and assumptions about the supposed social autonomy of mothers who did not breastfeed. This essay explores attitudes towards wet-nursing by drawing out the connections between prescription as laid out in "Puritan" sermons, representations in early modern English drama, and the social practice of wet-nursing during the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, particularly in London. Puritan writers and clergymen including Elizabeth Clinton, William Gouge, and Henry Smith advocated for maternal breastfeeding and criticized wet-nursing by warning that the practice could threaten the long-term stability of the family. This discourse, and its related stereotypes about wet-nursing, surface in early modern drama through depictions of social disorder in William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet (c. 1596) and Thomas Middleton's A Chaste Maid in Cheapside (1613). There is also a brief discussion of Thomas Dekker and John Webster's Westward Ho (1605). Romeo and Juliet depicts an extended representation of concerns about the wet-nurse's influence over children: the Nurse's centrality to the narrative enacts precisely what Puritan literature warned against. The article situates these plays in conversation with wider concerns about the bonds created through wet-nursing. This essay further shows that depictions of wet-nursing in early modern texts, and its broader dramatic narratives, express anxieties and assumptions about the supposed social autonomy of mothers who did not breastfeed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]