The Reproductive Organs

The central focus of female difference in these texts is the establishment of 19th century understanding of biological incommensurablity in the reproductive organs. Reproductive processes such as menstruation become the unique and distinguishing features of femaleness. In my study of Australian medical texts I look at the descriptions of the reproductive organs and menstruation as sites of female difference in the changing knowledge of the reproductive process in the development of the gynaecological and obstetrical gaze.

4(\a$

In my discussion of the texts in^tfre I look at how menstruation is depicted as the outward sign of woman as a different human ’animal’ from man. Woman is seen as tied to a life cycle of constant and dramatic flux and chang(j/bentred on the uterus. The reproductive system becomes the central focus of the gynaecological subject, illustrative of what Laqueur calls the ’syncjdochic

leaps of the imagination’ of 19th century medical discourse which ’seem to view woman as the uterus’. (Laqueur, 1986:35)

Springthorpe’s ’On the Psychological Aspect of the Sexual Appetite’ (1884) gives an important insight into women as ’the other’. In this text’s definition of male and female difference the interesting point is that the female body is the basic sexual organism, and the reproductive function of the two sexes is not seen as conceptually different. The reproductive function is described as a periodic flux of excitement. The catamenia (menstruation) is the result of excess excitement and secretion of the ovary, the uterus and its appendages. And the male body’s ejaculation a copy of the menstrual process. The difference between the two sexes is that man’s sexual emission is a momentary need whereas woman’s menstrual function is a continual ’drain’ and periodic preparation for future pregnancy. It is interesting that Springthorpe defines the male body’s nocturnal emissions as ’by action’ ’similar in all essentials to that of menstruation’. (Springthorpe,1884:99) This suggests that female reproductivity is the primary prototype of reproductioij^ind that the two types of ’sexual emission’ (ejaculation and menstruation) are not conceptually distinct. The only distinction is that man’s expression of reproductivity (nocturnal emission) is brief whereas woman’s body is continually affected by menstrual periodicity. This indicates that the concept of the body is essentially neutral, working as a nervous mechanism with the reproductive function the pivotal point of the body’s economy. Sexual difference is not clearly defined or indeed located as essential. However, there is one critical distinction between the two sexes - the passivity of the female body and the activity of the male body. Here reproduction is the central concept. Reproduction operates as the representation of an essential femaleness so that the female body takes on symbolic significance as the prototypical sexual organism, the passive body tied to reproduction, whereas the male body is seen as experiencing a form of sexual activity which is not completely tied to reproduction. To some extent this text is outside of the gynaecological and obstetrical gaze as a discussion of the ’psychological appetite’ but it is useful to look at the text here in order to show how the female body is essentially different because of its reproductivity. Though the text focuses on the male body’s ’psychological appetite’ I would suggest that it is the silencing of women’s sexuality which leads to the male body becoming the focus of the text : women’s sexuality = reproductivity = physiology; men’s sexuality = pleasure = psychological choice. These equations raise issues which I take up later in the chapter.

In Springthorpe’s ’Gimacteric Neurosis’ (1886) where the focus is more on the reproductive function, the difference of the female body is more clearly described. Again, there is a neutral nervous structure relating to the workings of the reproductive function. The nervous system, or neutral part of the body, is described in terms which depict order: it is described as ’harmonious’, ’methodical ’ and ’orderly’; and its structure is metaphorically compared to a ’mathematical formula’, a ’galvanic current’ and a smooth working ’economy’. (Springthorpe 1886:193-4) This language contrasts with the reproductive system which marks both difference and disturbance. The generative system ’especially in the female’ is disruptive, a ’typical illustration of nature ...

introducing a very potent disturbing element’. (Springthorpe 1886:194) Although the body is essentially neutral, it is the workings of the reproductive system which define the difference. Menstruation, in this text, is described in detail. Again, as pointed out in the last chapter, the language of this text denotes femaleness as soft, degenerating, in contrast to the precision of the neutral body. Puberty produces changes in the ovaries with the ’maturation and dehiscence of the ova’. The uterus similarly alters:

[tlhere is the soft pulpy swelling of the inner surface of the uterus, the formation of the decidua menstrualis, its fatty degeneration, and removal as useless tissue, with attendant haemorrhage from the vessels thus opened.

(Springthorpe 1886:195)

All of these changes alter the vascular, nutritional, chemical and electrical economy of the body. The nervous system is depicted as ’surprised’ by the ’unusual impressions’ the catamenia produces. Considering that this function runs a course of ’some 300 or 400’ repetitions and then subsides in the same ’traumatic fashion’ as its onset, the female body is being constituted as continually dictated by its reproductivity. Sexual difference is further defined by identifying the female body with nature. Whereas the male subject ’s lifestyle provoke a departure from health, it is ’Nature’ which produces the disturbances of the menstrual function in woman. This comment suggests that the female body is fundamentally closer to nature. The description of reproduction in this text belongs to the first category of 19th century theorists identified by Laqueur. Menstruation is a problematic but ’natural’ recurring degeneration and central feature of the

anatomy of the female body.

Addressing what we might now label anthropological as much as physiological issues, Jamieson in ’Sex, in Health and Disease’ (1887) identifies the ’most striking points of difference’ as the organs concered with reproduction. Woman, rather than man, is defined as ultimately ruled by her reproductive function, or as Jamieson phrases it, she is a ’more specialised being than man’.(Jamieson,1887:149) He identifies the ’uterus and mamma’ as ’two organs of prime importance’ and evidence of woman’s fuller development of the reproductive system. On to this identification of difference in the reproductive organs, is mapped Jamieson’s view of evolution and the racial duty of women to bear children. This is a clear example of a 19th century medical explanation’s ability to map a social view of women on to female anatomy and then use this as a justification for the truth of the social view of women. Women’s reproductive organs are identified as the point of difference and then used as reasons for why women ’s social role is naturally ordained. The uterus and mamma carry symbolic weight as physical representations of woman’s social role. (Jamieson, 1887:158)

In Balls Headley’s text The Evolution of the Diseases of Women (1894) the difference of the female body is not introduced into the neutral body structure or just symbolic of women’s

specialisation, but rather pervades the whole body. As a text situated in gynaecological and obstetrical discourse rather than in explanations of the nervous system or quasi-anthropological explanation of the race, the female body is seen as totally dominated by the reproductive function. The description of how even the very cells of the body regulate women’s existence is a clear illustration of how social laws are mapped on to observational descriptions of the body. Leaving to one side, for the moment, the importance of sexuality, in the following description we can see how the cells of the body take on natural laws and social systems, a symbolic weight which is then used to address women’s natural role as reproducer and propagator of the species. The ’sexual instinct’ which is equated as the need to propagate the race is described as:

the essence of the raison d’etre of woman’s form, the expression of the cause of her existence as woman; it is the evidence of her ancestral debt; of the instinctive necessity that the female productive cell must meet the male fecundating cell; the object is the propagation of the race, the production of the ensuing generation.

(Balls Headley,1894:1)

Here women’s reproductivity is defined as her essence in contrast to the male body where the generative function is just one expression of the male initiative and drive. Woman is the passive, nutritive receptor of ’spermatazoon’. On to this physiological difference is built women’s anthropological difference. Through the ’selection of the fittest’ women have developed into a ’race of ... extraordinary physical growth and beauty designed for the physical fulfilment of the propagation of the race’. (Balls Headley,894:22) Balls Headley’s argument is reminiscent of Jamieson’s. Women’s physiology has developed to a high degree of specialization for the purpose of reproduction. Their sexual attractiveness and maternal role are evolutionary physiological developments. In the statement that - ’the intense vitality of the uterus in the propagation of the race cannot be suspended without impunity’, (Balls Headley, 1892:537) the uterus symbolizes both the medicalised female body and the health of the population. In the next text, the link between the internal female organs and the health of the race constitutes women’s difference on all levels as reproductive.

O’Sullivan in in his ’Presidential Address’ (1897), working within the same theoretical framework, describes women’s physiological life as ruled by ’social laws’ which determine the essential difference of women’s natural and moral character. This text is a marked example of medical argument being used to consider questions about women’s equality. Women’s reproductive cycle is described as a complex hindrance to women’s ability to compete equally with men:

This question of the equal treatment of the sexes would seem to be looked at from every standpoint, save the one which alone could lead to a satisfactory solution of the problem, that of woman’s physical life ... Man’s share in reproducing the species is simple, while woman’s is complex. She is provided with organs which undergo extraordinary cyclic changes. During active procreative life, extending in this country in the average healthy woman from the age of 12 to 45 years, certain physical processes - ’ovulation’, ’menstruation’, ’conception’, ’gestation’, ’parturition’, ’lactation’ are in constant circuit - functions which man is exempt from.

(O’Sullivan, 1897:20)

Here women’s reproductive difference is seen as pervading her whole structure, defining her as a creature ruled by her physicality, whereas man is freed from the burden of such a complex reproductive system, a ’natural fact’ which allows him to pursue other roles.

The last three texts present a general picture of woman’s reproductivity as the defining point of difference. In a more detailed description of the workings of the reproductive function in Rothwell Adam’s ’Observations on Pathology and Surgery of Retro-displacement of the Uterus’ (1903) difference is evident in the structuring of the internal organs. Rothwell Adam describes the menstrual period as a time when the civilised habits of life and women’s vulnerable anatomy contributed to the production of physiological difficulties. The uterus is described as continually moving between two stages of the menstrual epoch, described as ’turgesence’ and ’defluxion’. The vulnerability of the uterus, described as a ’top-heavy organ’ subject to internal pressures just from the ’erect position assumed by the normal female’, symbolises the vulnerability of women in general. All women, Rothwell Adam suggests, feel disabilities at^Leaving to one side the question of what is a normal or disordered female existence (this is discussed in chapter five), the point to be made here is that the menstrual cycle introduces a special condition in to the female body which signals the difference of women’s physical entity as a whole and the need for particular medical attention. The female body is delicately pivoted around the menstrual function which represents most clearly the assumed vulnerablity of women’s anatomy and physiology. This representation is then used to explain women’s vulnerable social position.

In another text by Rothwell Adam, ’Dysmenorrhoea’ (1909), the function of menstruation is described in more detail, still working from the notion of ebb and flow of the circulatory system:

[f]or some days, probably a week, before the menstrual flow appears, a progressive alteration occurs in the pelvic circulation. The organs became hyperaemic, glandular activity increases, and, in all probability, a heightening of the general vascular tension until the finer vessels of the endometrium give way, the effused blood tinging the profuse secretion from the glands, and thus establishing the menstrual flow. On establishment of the flow, the pelvic activity rapidly diminishes until the next menstrual epoch recommences.

(Rothwell Adam, 1909:445)

Again the basic disequilibrium of the female body is explained as a result of its anatomy, physiology, the social environment and the ’consequences of civilisation’, in particular the ’unsuitable clothing and employment during the adolescent period of life’. (Rothwell Adam, 1909:447)

In these last texts menstruation is explained as a physiological phenomenon removed from any explicit reference to pregnancy. In Schalit’s (1904) explanation for a patient’s early menopause the connection between menstruation and pregnancy is more explicitly made. The description of the female body as an economy ’incessantly saving towards the impending conception ... provision for and nourishment of the child’ (Schalit, 1904:409) situates women’s difference as determined by the reproductive function and potential pregnancies. Menstruation is not just an ebb and flow of blood but a sign of women’s reproductive reason for being. The female ’organism’ is defined by the ’genital apparatus’ which exists for the individual and species. If conception fails to take place then menstruation occurs, and if women fail to safeguard their body’s economy the ’future child is badly nourished and of delicate constitution’ (Schalit, 1904:409). In this text we can see how biological incommensurability is built into the description of the female reproductive body. Woman is a commodity which is defined by its reproductive potential, once reproductive life is over she is no longer sexual, she is a ’spent’ woman and to extend the economic metaphor, her capital is redundant when pregnancy is no longer possible. The language reflects how women’s utility is their reproductivity, how her ’otherness’ is determined in this biological difference.

4.3 The Nervous System

In the texts discussed in the last section the female reproductive organs take on the symbolic weight of gender difference. The uterus represents woman’s social, moral, physiological and anatomical capabilities. It is the centre of the female economy, permeating out to all other functions. One of these functions which was seen to be particularly important in defining sexual difference was the nervous system. As we have already seen in Springthorpe’s text ’Climacteric Neurosis’ (1886), the female reproductive system could be understood to have a traumatic effect on the nervous system. In this section I trace how the female nervous system was understood in relation to the reproductive system. I look looks at how women were seen to suffer from various disorders, especially hysterical, as an outcome of the perception of the female body as an unstable economy, subject to constant internal variation, and the likelihood of disorder further enhanced by the greater delicacy and sensitivity which were thought to characterize female nerves.

The question I am asking in my reading of these texts is how far the female body’s periodicity influences and is influenced by nervous disorders and did gynaecological and obstetrical discourse produce a physiological basis for what was generally held to be women’s greater emotional volatility? I look at the example of hysteria as a nervous disorder which is intimately linked with the female body, almost to the extent of it being defined as a normal state

of the female body, providing an image of woman as always lacking and in need of control. My reason for focusing on hysteria are twofold: one is that hysteria has been a subject of great interest both historically and in contemporary literature on gender difference; and, secondly, the physiological explanation of hysteria has been side-stepped in favour of the psychoanalytical or post-Freudian view. In my study of hysteria I look at the physiological basis rather than at the unconcious in order to see how hysteria was associated with gynaecological issues.

During the late 19th century there were two modes of understanding the female nervous system. One saw the reproductive organs as peripheral irritants to the central nervous system. The ovaries and uterus were seen as particularly disruptive end organs in the economy of the body. The other model saw the whole female body as an impressionable medium, more vulnerable to nervous disorders and emotional states. Here the whole feminine condition is treated as nervously unstable. The two models existed concurrently but I would argue that over the period there is a general shift toward the second way of understanding nervous disorders as the focus extended from the reproductive organs to the physiology of the whole female body as permeated by its reproductivity.

Examples of the first way of perceiving the body are Springthorpe’s explanation of menopausal disorders in ’Climacteric Neurosis’ (1886) and of epilepsy in ’Treatment of Epilepsy by Removal of Peripheral Irritants (1887)’. In the first text, as discussed above, the reproductive system alters the smooth functioning of the nervous system. The nervous system is described as a neutral function with the reproductive function the point of femaleness and therefore difference. The female body is made more prone to emotional instability by the functioning of this end organ. Similarly, in his 1887 text an ’ovarian’ and ’uterine’ irritation are ’looked for’ in order to treat epilepsy. The description of epilepsy is applied to a neutral body; it is an ’irregular overflow’ of messages to the ’nerve area ... in communication with a great number of cells and sensory nerves generally’. (Springthorpe,1886:177) In the female body it is the generative organs which are understood to produce the imbalance. In other studies he links menstrual and uterine irritants as a common cause of epilepsy. In this study eleven out of nineteen cases of epilepsy were diagnosed as being produced by an ovarian irritant or related to the menstrual period.