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Abstract

The pain of childbirth, whose description often link it closely to death phantasies, paralyzing fright and the fear of being torn apart, was integrated into a complex network of meanings in which ghosts and demons, personal misdemeanour, guilt, purification and initiation all had their place. Each individual interpretation of pain was supported by a variety of cultural meanings related to symbolic, metaphoric, popular religious, gender-specific, social and emotional significances. The meaningful components of these various meanings were not so much analyzed and discussed as incorporated into a code of conduct and creative practical application. On the one hand, by means of collective care and a staged joint overcoming of the pain, they robbed the experience of pain of its isolating prong and of the feeling of being at the mercy of a body both physically and imaginarily defenceless. At the same time they provided model interpretations for a variety of contexts; up as far as the mid-eighteenth century statements made while suffering from the pain of childbirth were assigned a high degree of truth; when assessing the quality and quantity of pain at childbirth, 'natural' pain was considered as initiation into motherhood, while excessive pain was seen as a punishment for concrete individual faults (violation of rules for pregnant women due to give birth) and a complete lack of pain as an indication of not wanting or not being able to be a mother (infanticides).