Reproductivity

From the moment we are born, women have been conditioned for motherhood. It remains a common question to ask, never if, but when will you have children. While it seemed to be a woman’s most important task in life, to give birth, the female reproductive system has been inadequately studied, many female-related ailments have been dismissed while others, hysteria for example, have been invented. Many of these works use historic anatomical diagrams as a starting point; they have widely varying degrees of accuracy. Angélique du Coudray was a midwife and teacher in France in the 17th century. Her teaching aid mannequins, made from fabric and very accurate, still exist today. Cradle to Grave 1 and 2 represent all the eggs in a female fetus, all the body will ever make in her lifetime. The stockings represent the length of a life, as it was a tradition in England, the land of my forebears, to bury the dead in hand-knitted socks.