The Moralized Breast in Early Modern Spain

Object of desire, symbol of sin and repentance, political icon, attribute of maternal love, food source—the female breast represents all of these concepts. Recent scholars and cultural critics have analyzed the erotics and political potentialities of women’s breasts. The lactating breast, however, has not been the object of sustained meditation. It, too, is a signifier of rich complexity, the inspirational source of allegories of love, nourishment, and creation, as well as poverty, charity, duty, and even intellectual impulse.1 The allegorical potential of the lactating breast surpasses mere physiological function, attracting the attention of moralists, social critics, medical doctors, activists, and others. Today in the United States, nursing and bottle-feeding mothers engage in disputes that implicate issues of maternal obligation, mother-child bonding, career choice, and child development. Amid claims that maternal breastfeeding raises children’s intelligence quotients (and, according to one study, the intellectual capacity of nursing mothers themselves), facilitates parent-child bonding, prevents food allergies, and bestows emotional security on children, the American Academy of Pediatrics has recommended that all mothers breastfeed their children for at least the first year of life.2