A monstrous regiment of women: nascite mostruose come stigma del dissenso religioso delle donne negli anni delle guerre civili inglesi (1642-1652)

The present essay aims at investigating four accounts of human monstrous births published in London between 1642 and 1652. Promoted by the press during the conflict between Charles I and the Parliament, and more specifically in the years in which the debate about the reformed church was still rather heated, the four pamphlets share the same interpretation of monstrous births, read as the result of the mothers’ religious dissidence. The stigmatization of women was not a new phenomenon: in the decades before the English Civil Wars took place, the reports of monstrous births had frequently put women in a bad light, often through the syllogism according to which deformed children were the manifestation of their mother’s secret crimes. The newness of the documents about monstrous births printed in the period 1642-1652 was not to defame women for their sexual or moral offences, but for their religious dissidence.