Claudia Mühlbacher

Abstract

This doctoral thesis examines childlessness and motherhood within the discourse of the women’s movement in the Habsburg Monarchy between approximately 1850 and 1915. It focuses on the question of what meanings childlessness took on within the women’s movement and how motherhood was reinterpreted within the political and social context. 

The primary sources are the journals of women’s movement associations, which served as forums for discursive negotiation. Depending on the course of the research, additional contemporary materials and biographical documents will be drawn upon to capture the interplay between public discourse and individual lived experiences. Methodologically, the work combines a gender-historical perspective with a discourse-analytical approach. 

The aim is to uncover normative conceptions of motherhood and femininity and to show how childless women were made visible or marginalised. Childlessness is understood here both as a lived practice and as a field of tension between social expectations. 

Furthermore, the study examines the extent to which motherhood was rhetorically redefined to legitimise women’s education, social reforms and political participation. By incorporating biographical perspectives, the work analyses the relationship between public discourse and individual lived realities. 

Childlessness thus appears as a challenge to normative notions of a female body perceived as potentially maternal, and as a starting point for their renegotiation.

 

Supervisor: Univ.-Prof. Dr. phil. Mag. Heidrun Zettelbauer