In nineteenth-century Europe, motherhood was the pinnacle of a woman's life.
It confirmed her virtue and her fulfilment. Motherhood was expected of a married woman, and failure to conceive was almost always deemed a female problem. The childless woman was a figure to be pitied.
Amongst the Russian peasantry it was noted that ‘barrenness for the peasant woman is a most painful situation... it often constitutes a source of moral humiliation... deprives her finally of the joy of having children through whom alone a mother can firmly implant herself in the family of her husband and can be guaranteed consolation and comfort in her old age.'1 Throughout Europe, childless women were encouraged to find work caring for children — as a governess or a nursery maid — in supposed compensation.2 Motherhood ensured integration into female networks, it guaranteed status, and it was seen as security for the future.Accompanying the increasing value attached to motherhood was a shift in the way the mothering role was conceived. Before 1800, motherhood was presented as natural, but already by the beginning of the nineteenth century the mothering role was being transformed from an instinctual or essential attribute of all women into something that had to be learned. In public discourse, if not in reality, motherhood was portrayed as a full-time job that could not be combined with paid work; it became a duty to the state and a social responsibility. ‘As a biological condition as well as a set of social definitions, motherhood was all-encompassing.'3 One of the consequences of this change was that woman's role as mother was used as the basis of republicans' and feminists' claims to female citizenship. The consequences of these shifts in conceptualising the mother were to be far-reaching for all mothers and indeed for all women.
At either end of the century stand a number of prominent women who, in their role as mothers, came to represent the good and the bad maternal figure. During the French Revolution, motherhood came to carry a great symbolic burden.
Women argued that they had rights which flowed from their responsibilities as mothers. ‘We would not be able to resolve to give birth to children destined to live in a country compliant with despotism' were the words of one group of women to the king Louis XVI, explicitly linking republican politics with their own rights and duties as mothers.4 Queen Marie Antoinette was represented by revolutionary republicans as the antithesis of the republican mother, much as she tried hard to counter this perception by appearing in public with her two surviving children. In fact the queen was distraught at the death of her eldest son and her youngest daughter, and following the execution of her husband was desperate to prevent her remaining son, the dauphin, being taken from her.5 Russia's Catherine the Great (1729—96) also came to symbolise the decadent and despotic past. Her very commitment to affairs of state and her lack of involvement in family life identified Catherine as a disinterested mother. By the 1850s, on the other hand, Britain's Queen Victoria (1819—1901) was affectionately portrayed as the ideal wife and mother. Depicted surrounded by her beloved Albert and her many children, Victoria was frequently described as the ‘mother of the nation'.6 Alongside Victoria were Queen Louise of Prussia and Louise's daughter Aleksandra Federovna, Empress of Russia, all of whom fulfilled the maternal role within the home, all of whom saw motherhood as just as important as, if not more important than, matters of court and state and in turn were regarded by their subjects as almost ‘goddess-mothers'.7 They epitomised the new model of virtuous womanhood.