Fairy Tale Queens: Representations of Early Modern Queenship by Jo Eldridge Carney Page A

contrary was profound. The last chapter described how some women, in their fervent desire to conceive, could falsely believe they were pregnant. Mary Tudor was not alone in experiencing phantom pregnancy though she has become its most visible historical representative; however, Mary’s dismal reproductive saga did not end with her failure to produce a child. Toward the end of her first presumed pregnancy and in the months following, gossip alluded to a substitution plot and a changeling baby.
    The rumors did not stop there. One doubtful subject nailed up a placard that read, “Shall we be such fools, oh noble English, as to think that our Queen will give birth to anything, except it be a marmot or a puppy?” 50 Early modern queens joined women from all classes in their presumed capacity for producing monstrosities. Sir Philip Hoby wrote to ambassador John Mason about the gossip surrounding Mary, claiming that “such reports emanated from the French Ambassador, who is here for the recovery of his health, and who affirmed that on the 7th of May the Queen was delivered of a mole or lump of flesh, and was in great peril of death.” 51
    Fairy tales conjure up stories of queens giving birth to pigs, dogs, cats, and moles, and other fictional exaggerations of aberrant births, but this last animal reference, the mole, marks a particular conflation between historical beliefs and fairy-tale lore. The French ambassador claimed that Mary delivered a “mole or lump of flesh.” Anne Boleyn’s final pregnancy ended prematurely in what was called, decades later, “a shapeless mass of flesh.” 52 Similarly, when Marguerite de Navarre realized that her assumed late pregnancy was false, “the child she was carrying turned out to be a mole, a fleshy mass in the uterus formed by a dead ovum.” 53
    Whereas the fairy-tale mole appears to be one of many bestial candidates in the monstrous birth menagerie, the word “mole” had resonance beyond its animal connotations. The concept of the mole, or specifically the uterine mole, can be traced to the ancients. The earliest description of the mole in medical writing appeared in Hippocrates’  Diseases of Women ; Pliny and Galen also wrote about moles, and in the medieval period, several authors, including the Arabic physician Avicenna, continued discussion of the  mola uteri.   54 In the early modern period, gynecological treatises and midwifery manuals describe the mole in colorful and ample detail, creating careful taxonomies to account for its various manifestations, but with each analysis, the term becomes increasingly polysemous. What is clear is that the amorphous mole was seen as one more variation on the popular theme of the monstrous birth.
    Amid the various discussions of molar birth, there was some agreement about definitions and causes. Early modern theories of reproduction were often inconsistent, but the most dominant paradigm suggested that successful conception involved the mingling of male and female seminal fluid or “seed” during intercourse. 55 Nicholas Culpepper’s claim in his  Directory for Midwives  was typical of this view: “The Woman spends her seed as well as The Man.” 56 Jane Sharp’s explanation in  The Midwives Book  argued similarly: “True conception is then, when the seed of both sexes is good, and duly prepared and cast into the womb as into fruitful ground, and is there so fitly and equally mingled, the Man’s seed with the woman’s.” 57 This model may suggest more equality than is warranted, since it was also believed that in conception “there must be an Agent [man] and a Patient or weaker vessel [woman], that she should be subject unto the office of the Man.” 58
    In his influential work on the history of sexuality, Thomas Laqueur emphasizes early modern theories of erotic and conceptual equality during intercourse, but Gail Kern Paster points out, “It is easy to be attracted to Laqueur’s account, for it historicizes an