It's easy to imagine why a clever Englishwoman of the eighteenth century might have wished to move about the world as a disembodied mind. Virginity was a corporeal asset that could lose all its value in an instant. Your bed partner might well be suffering from a raging S.T.D., for which a common treatment was a mercury douche (just as ineffective and as toxic as it sounds). Childbirth, before the advent of obstetric anesthesia, in the mid-nineteenth century, was a harrowing and not infrequently deadly trial. In 1764, when the talented writer and salonnière Hester Thrale gave birth, after three days of agonizing labor, to the first of her children, her attending physician pronounced, “It is a Lady, Madam; destined to bear what you are this Moment freed from." Thrale would go on to fourteen more pregnancies in sixteen years "holding my Head over a Bason 6 months in the Year," as she wrote.
Esta historia es de la edición July 22, 2024 de The New Yorker.
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Esta historia es de la edición July 22, 2024 de The New Yorker.
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YULE RULES
“Christmas Eve in Miller’s Point.”
COLLISION COURSE
In Devika Rege’ first novel, India enters a troubling new era.
NEW CHAPTER
Is the twentieth-century novel a genre unto itself?
STUCK ON YOU
Pain and pleasure at a tattoo convention.
HEAVY SNOW HAN KANG
Kyungha-ya. That was the entirety of Inseon’s message: my name.
REPRISE
Reckoning with Donald Trump's return to power.
WHAT'S YOUR PARENTING-FAILURE STYLE?
Whether you’re horrifying your teen with nauseating sex-ed analogies or watching TikToks while your toddler eats a bagel from the subway floor, face it: you’re flailing in the vast chasm of your child’s relentless needs.
COLOR INSTINCT
Jadé Fadojutimi, a British painter, sees the world through a prism.
THE FAMILY PLAN
The pro-life movement’ new playbook.
President for Sale - A survey of today's political ads.
On a mid-October Sunday not long ago sun high, wind cool-I was in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, for a book festival, and I took a stroll. There were few people on the streets-like the population of a lot of capital cities, Harrisburg's swells on weekdays with lawyers and lobbyists and legislative staffers, and dwindles on the weekends. But, on the façades of small businesses and in the doorways of private homes, I could see evidence of political activity. Across from the sparkling Susquehanna River, there was a row of Democratic lawn signs: Malcolm Kenyatta for auditor general, Bob Casey for U.S. Senate, and, most important, in white letters atop a periwinkle not unlike that of the sky, Kamala Harris for President.
