Crying Over Spilt Milk

Breast-feeding has, throughout the generations, been perceived as a natural and instinctive activity essential for the survival of the human race. And yet, the chosen method, its frequency, and the importance attributed to it depend on varying cultural trends, as demonstrated by the visual representations of breast-feeding that testify to its intricate connection to social, religious, and economic ideologies.

A “mania” on the subject of breast-feeding and its significance has become apparent in the Western world over the last few decades. In the book Crying over Spilt Milk, the author investigates the ideological concepts behind the endorsement of maternal breast-feeding in modern Western society. Using diverse visual and textual sources and surveying hundreds of artworks produced from the time of the French Revolution to the First World War,Gal Ventura reveals the historical, political, religious, and economic factorsthat shaped the representations of breast-feeding and its substitutes in French art. She thus sheds lights on the changing attitudes toward maternal breast-feeding in nineteenth-century France, which have had a considerable impact on the glorification of breast-feeding in the Western world to this very day.