After reading a memoir of high-risk pregnancy by a friend (more about that ahead), I got to thinking about the prevalence of pregnancy in classic novels by women authors as a central theme. 

Of course, there are many instances of female characters in novels (both by male and female authors) bearing a child or miscarrying, but pregnancy itself is rarely more than quickly touched upon.

Birth control methods were unreliable until relatively recently in human development; yet novels centering on pregnancy, other than the  seduction and abandonment trope, aren’t all that common. Her First Time: Seduction and Loss of Innocence in 1920s Women’s Novels presents several classic titles in which the heroine becomes pregnant (usually outside of marriage), with various outcomes. Read More→