This reflex recalls the “conservation of energy” theory, developed by doctors in the nineteenth century, in which the human body’s organs and functions were thought to be in competition for the limited amount of energy circulating among them. From that point on, knowing their lives’ ultimate goal to be reproduction, women were obliged to “concentrate their physical energy internally, toward the womb,” as Barbara Ehrenreich and Deirdre English explain.83 When pregnant, they were expected to remain horizontal for most of the day and avoid all other activity, especially anything intellectual:
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