¹University of Leicester, U.K.

Abstract

The primary aim of this article is to put Rousseau's arguments against wet nursing into political context, by discussing their connections with theatricality and representation and their wider connotations for understanding Rousseau's thought. In the process, it positions Rousseau's ideas in a specific eighteenth-century context, one that connects his arguments about wet nursing and maternal feeding to a wider discussion of morals and manners. Through an examination of behavioral literature, particularly conduct and advice books, it explores how morals, manners and gender interacted as agents of social stability, and how the "realm of aspirations" connected political theory to the politics of everyday life. Having shown how gender operated in this realm of aspirations in the eighteenth century, the paper connects this preoccupation with display to Judith Butler's theory of gender as performance, and gives her arguments about the "gender core" and the maternal body a historical context.