[Images of nursing mothers in France, 18th and 19th centuries].

Abstract

As they became more widely adopted in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century France, wet-nursing and wet-nurses appeared prominently in the iconography of the time. Such images turned negative as criticism against “mercenary breast-feeding” mounted. Over the nineteenth century in particular, wet-nurses were heavily featured in press caricatures: they were being mocked while described as simple-minded, dumb, greedy creatures, with proclivities ranging from a taste for garish attire, to sexual appetites fuelling trysts in public gardens with soldiers on leave. A representative sample of such images will be selected to highlight the codes and values underpinning this mockery.