Maternal Breastfeeding and Wet-Nursing in Late Seventeenth-Century French Fairy Tales

Abstract:In this article, I study the underexplored question of breastfeeding in late seventeenthcentury French fairy tales. At a time when wet-nursing was the cultural norm, fairy tales by Charles Perrault, Jean de Préchac, and Marie-Catherine d'Aulnoy trace important shifts in the history of attitudes toward breastfeeding. These tales illustrate examples of breast-feeding that go against the grain of the common custom of wet-nursing and also support this tradition, thus adding to our knowledge about how beliefs regarding maternal breastfeeding began to change at the end of the seventeenth century, paving the way for the Rousseauian ideal of maternity to come.