Kill Your Darlings: Birth Control, Child Abandonment, and Infanticide in Eighteenth and Nineteenth Century Britain

Abstract

In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, there were few ways to prevent a birth that were both effective and safe, yet single or impoverished women often had no way to provide for children. As a result, infanticide became an increasingly prominent issue in British society. It was in this context, during a period of debate and reform, that Daniel Defoe wrote Roxana, a novel which, as Figure 1 illustrates, is full of children—children who often remain nameless rather than becoming fully realized characters. In Roxana, Defoe takes a surprisingly sympathetic view toward the plight of the eighteenth century woman, a view which is complicated by his more explicitly negative positions on the topic presented in A Treatise Concerning the Use and Abuse of the Marriage Bed (hereafter referred to as the Treatise for brevity). These two texts show Defoe contributing to the debate on a growing public concern— and confusion—around morality, socioeconomic inequity, and reproductive rights.