In Persuasion, Anne Elliot takes no notice of Nurse Rooke, and readers, unaware of the occupation she represents, no longer recognize her importance. Nurse Rooke is the caretaker of new life and new mothers, a “monthly nurse,” a live-in woman hired to assist for a four-week period starting prior to the impending birth. The role would have been well-known and commonplace to Austen’s early readership. The monthly nurse has now fallen into obscurity.1 Even Roger Sales, in Jane Austen and Representations of Regency England, misrepresents Mrs. Rooke as a “midwife.” The terms are not synonymous. The monthly nurse’s duties, as well as the availability and hire of such women, surface in diaries and letters from the circle of Emma Austen, wife of Jane Austen’s nephew James Edward Austen (later Austen-Leigh). Letters fill gaps in the daily diary testimony to explain step-by-step advancements, from the mother’s being “safe in her bed” with a new baby to the declaration that she has been churched, marking the end of her confinement. The accounts of Emma’s aunts and mother depict confinement in the 1790s and 1810s; in the 1820s and 1830s, Emma’s generation follows a comparable course. History, therefore, illuminates Austen’s fiction and the character of Nurse Rooke herself. Although she is a conduit for (inaccurate) matrimonial news reaching Mrs. Smith’s ears, Nurse Rooke’s position refutes the accusation of “gossip” levied against her. She, in fact, is a harbinger of change about to take place in Anne Elliot’s world. She links life and death with a modicum of Christian charity, and she commemorates the importance of women banded together in moments of mortal peril.
The monthly nurse shows the father the new baby while the new mother looks on from the chair. Thomas Rowlandson, from The Dance of Life (1817). © The Trustees of the British Museum.
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When Anne Elliot calls at the lodgings of her old school friend Mrs. Smith a second day in a row, she cannot recall who answered the door the day before: “‘Was it not Mrs. Speed, as usual, or the maid? I observed no one in particular’” (P 197). Anne may be forgiven if lingering euphoria from the previous evening’s concert clouds her usual attentive manner. Mrs. Smith notices Anne’s elevated disposition, but she ascribes it to a different lover, Mr. Elliot, rather than to the unknown Captain Wentworth. Mr. Elliot has had unrestricted entrance to the household of Nurse Rooke’s last employers, Colonel and Mrs. Wallis of Marlborough-buildings, Bath. Nurse Rooke’s presence in her sister’s house enables Mrs. Smith’s soon-to-be-disclosed history to connect Mr. Elliot’s past with Anne Elliot’s present. Nurse Rooke, behind the door, remains unseen by Anne and, without contextual information, she remains a shadow figure to modern readers.
The monthly nurse hides within personal writings penned during (and after) Jane Austen’s lifetime. In 1832, Emma Austen’s eldest sister, Augusta Wilder, prepared to give birth to her first child. Augusta and Emma, pregnant with her third baby, were to be confined in their mother’s house at the same time. Men and women respected “God’s will” when preparing for the possibility of death in childbed and for the fact that not every pregnancy ended with a living child. A miscarriage might occur; the child might be stillborn, or struggle to live, or fail to thrive. Every woman knew of someone, mother or child, who had died instead of survived. Jane Austen had news of two deaths at the time her sister-in-law Mary Lloyd Austen awaited the imminent birth of James Edward, her first child. Jane wrote to Cassandra: “I believe I never told you that Mrs Coulthard and Anne . . . are both dead, and both died in childbed. We have not regaled Mary with this news” (17–18 November 1798).2
Among the English gentry, an expectant mother arranged where she was to be confined (typically, she sought to be with her own mother); chose a doctor (accoucheur); and, her particular purview, secured a monthly nurse who would attend her before, during, and after the infant’s arrival. The position’s title derives from the one month that the nurse attended, though additional funds would keep her longer. Augusta Wilder observed that her nurse’s “terms are wonderfully moderate for the month, but certainly out of proportion for extra weeks. . . . [H]er other charges are perfectly reasonable & usual.” In addition to her fee and charges, the monthly nurse could anticipate slight monetary “gifts” from her employer’s extended family. Based on the £16 paid in 1835, a monthly nurse in steady employment could anticipate less than £200 per annum.3
The search for a monthly nurse emerges as the imperative concern for Emma Austen and her sister. As letters chronicle, each sister sought recommendations through friends whose taste and endorsement felt trustworthy. Augusta Wilder began inquiring in February 1832, five months before she expected to be confined; she calculated the hire would begin about July 11 or 12. Her mother disagreed, believing the nurse should be engaged for the beginning of July. Emma had engaged her nurse for early July, which led to the possibility of two semi-idle monthly nurses housed under the same roof. One thing worried Augusta Wilder: her preferred choice, Mrs. Price, had agreed to nurse their pregnant cousin, who was not divulging when she expected to be confined! Augusta made alternate plans. She had “given Mrs Scawen already a commission to make enquiries of Mrs Wyndham about Mrs Clayton her Chichester nurse whom I took such a fancy to 3 yrs ago.” In early March, Emma’s husband wrote to her of the unexpected death of her nurse, Mrs. Rickards: “I can hardly imagine being confined without her or perhaps ever liking any other nurse so well,” Emma wrote (Letter). Emma’s esteem for Mrs. Rickards is demonstrated by the list of five women to whom she felt she could recommend the nurse, and four to whom she had recommended her (Diary 1831). So Emma fell back to square one: “I have great dependence upon constant practise, experience & nurses having nursed under good Doctors.” Like her sister, Emma had a few irons in the fire. She wrote to her mother that she would enquire about a nurse in the neighborhood whom the doctor highly recommended, and she would talk with her husband about two nurses recommended by two ladies of her acquaintance (Letter).
While Emma renewed her search, there came good news about Mrs. Price, Augusta’s choice. Cousin Elizabeth welcomed her nurse on the evening of May 28, and delivered her boy the next morning. Everything had been prepared “just in time.” Augusta’s mother happily reported her niece’s being safely brought to bed, but she was happier that Mrs. Price would nurse them during the month of June: “[W]e may feel very sure of your nurse. Yours must be a July bird” (Smith).
Emma delivered on June 30, and Augusta on July 2. Both babies arrived earlier than their mothers had expected. Emma’s relevant diary entries once noted details of labor and delivery. Pages have been excised, affecting entries (in whole or part) from Friday, June 22, through Sunday, July 8. Except for notice of the child (by name) and the date of birth written at the top, little documents the first days postpartum. Mrs. Rickards was evidently replaced by a Mrs. Goodchild: “Mrs. Goodchild went away” is recorded on August 2, the day Augusta Wilder departed with her nurse, Mrs. Price (Austen-Leigh, Diary 1832).
These manuscript sources help us extrapolate the actions of characters within Austen’s novels. Persuasion’s Mrs. Wallis would have inquired for a monthly nurse from among women in her circle. Not only would she have required a capable woman, she would have hoped to discover someone compatible. Certainly, nurses themselves placed advertisements in newspapers, but recommendations within one’s social set were preferable. Deborah Kaplan has borrowed the valuable phrase of a “knowable community” for this kind of network (7). Mrs. Wallis engaged Mrs. Rooke, “a nurse by profession.” This sister of landlady Mrs. Speed “had always a home in that house when unemployed” (P 155), thus the connection between Mrs. Wallis and Mrs. Smith. An ideal physical portrait of Nurse Rooke may be formed through Pye Henry Chavasse’s Advice to a Wife, which suggests that “[a] monthly nurse ought to be middle-aged. If she be young, she is apt to be thoughtless and giggling; if she be old, she may be deaf and stupid.” He also advises as to size: “A fat dumpling of a nurse—and some nurses are as fat as butter—. . . ought not to be chosen, as she can make no proper lap for her little charge” (Chavasse 189, 193).
Advertisement, The Morning Post, July 5, 1817. From the author's private collection.
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Extreme intimacy enveloped mother, baby, and nurse during the month of her tenure. Nurse Rooke would have administered to both charges, and nurse and baby typically shared a room nearby or adjoining the mother’s. The nurse swaddled the newborn, and her presence would allow Mrs. Wallis to obtain restorative sleep. She could guide the mother trying to nurse or help to locate a wet nurse if the baby proved uncooperative or the mother produced insufficient milk. The nurse expertly tightened the binder (or bandage) around the mother’s swollen postpartum midriff, and by informed manipulation of the vaginal syringe she bathed daily the sore internal parts. She monitored the flow and character of the lochia (the three stages of post-birth discharge from the uterus). Careful massaging of the engorged breasts was left to her capable hands. A high standard of care being her profession’s specialty, Nurse Rooke would remain vigilant against any turn in the progress of mother and baby; worrying observations could summon the doctor. She would monitor visitors admitted, especially in the beginning of convalescence, although Colonel Wallis would have received well-wishers all month long.
Mrs. Wallis would have observed a slow, time-honored recovery. Normally, by the end of the first week postpartum, the recumbent Mrs. Wallis would rise for an hour to have her bed made. A half-week more and the meals taken in her room now would now occur out of bed. Around day twelve, she would dress in loose clothing with “riding stays” and a sash around the waist. Mrs. Wallis might amuse herself with sewing, but sitting to write letters at her writing slope would still be a few days off. By two weeks postpartum, Mrs. Wallis could walk into other rooms, though staying only an hour or two. The growth and fattening of the infant would count as relevant signposts. A fretful or lethargic baby would activate the nurse’s most watchful eye; in cherubic sleep, its parents’ admiration. A cap, part of the obligatory “baby linen” and not unlike those stitched and embroidered by Jane Austen herself, might overwhelm the tiny creature and need careful pinning. Pins, too, closed the “nappy” end of the child, the output of which was observed and noted if excessive or inadequate.
As the confinement neared its close, Mrs. Wallis would have visited more public areas of her home. In the end, she could walk outside, and the child would have been taken for airings (some in the carriage). Mrs. Wallis’s attendance at the church service celebrating God’s compassion in sparing her life would have formally ended her confinement. Typically, the child’s christening would take place at the same time. At this point, the monthly nurse would be replaced by a nursery maid.
Nurse Rooke’s goal would be further requests from the same household for future confinements. She would seek to be held in such esteem that enthusiastic recommendations would issue from Mrs. Wallis to all friends in need, including (Mrs. Smith surmises) “‘flying visions of attending the next Lady Elliot,’” be she the wife of Sir William or Sir Walter (P 208).
Nurse Rooke has heard of Miss Anne Elliot’s recent visits to Mrs. Smith, and, associating the young lady with the impending engagement of Mr. Elliot, Colonel Wallis’s constant friend and companion, she discloses that information to Mrs. Smith. Is Nurse Rooke a gossip? Mrs. Smith paints her so. Yet, Mrs. Smith then says that Nurse Rooke “‘will have nothing to report but of lace and finery’” (156). In essence, Mrs. Wallis’s fine baby linen will be the conversation’s limit, indicating that the nurse’s professionalism checks any repetition of household tittle-tattle.4 Nurse Rooke, in fact, does not spread tales but merely broadcasts news of the good fortune of Mrs. Smith’s newfound former school friend.
In fact, it is Mrs. Smith’s keen communal interest—her inclination to gossip—that laments only being told of “lace and finery.” Long before Anne Elliot’s arrival at the door, Mrs. Smith has garnered stories of last evening’s concert from “a laundress and a waiter” (193). With her “disposition to converse” (153), Mrs. Smith so relishes gossipy conversation that she interrogates Anne Elliot about specific concertgoers, people unknown to (and unseen by) Anne (193). Mrs. Smith is a gentlewoman who enjoys being employed with needlework, “which carried her out of herself” (154). She and Mrs. Wallis share a commonality, if in little else, in their idle gregariousness. That Mrs. Smith knows her handicrafts are sold to Nurse Rooke’s patients gives her added incentive to learn about them, but gossip, because of her professional ethics, would be anathema to the nurse.
The news Mrs. Rooke divulges to Mrs. Smith, although learned during her stay with Mrs. Wallis, centers on a person known to Mrs. Smith: Mr. William Walter Elliot. Colonel Wallis has witnessed Mr. Elliot’s boasts of his expectations (205), and he no doubt has heard from him about Lady Russell’s approbation of a match between the Elliot cousins (159). The nurse certainly has served as Mrs. Wallis’s audience as the confined mother chatters about Mr. Elliot’s good fortune (197, 205). Their discussion of Mr. Elliot ignites the curiosity of Mrs. Rooke, a professional “‘favourer of matrimony’” (208), who wishes for a glance at Miss Anne Elliot. This curiosity places Nurse Rooke behind the door as Anne enters: the self-reliant nurse adroitly detects a future client in this future bride. Mrs. Rooke’s assertion of an Elliot–Elliot engagement, united with Anne’s vehement denial of any attachment to her cousin, induces Mrs. Smith to speak frankly of the past she and her husband shared with Mr. Elliot. Without Nurse Rooke, the impoverished Mrs. Smith could not have pressed Anne so insistently. Mrs. Smith seeks the supposed bride’s assistance in solving her own concerns, only to realize that this future Mrs. William Elliot dies before drawing breath. Mrs. Smith and Nurse Rooke, in concert, deliver Anne the information she needs to fortify her resistance to Mr. Elliot.
In the final chapters of Persuasion, Austen creates a circle of women outside the Elliot pale who act to Anne’s benefit. This circle includes Anne’s former governess, who alerts her to Mrs. Smith’s whereabouts and current circumstances, enabling the two ladies to reestablish their lost relationship. Although the narrator mentions Mrs. Smith’s “dissipations of the past” and Anne learns from the lady herself that she “had lived very much in the world” (153), the invalid’s recent travails offset earlier transgressions. Mrs. Smith’s information doesn’t convince Anne to choose Wentworth; her disclosures about Mr. Elliot merely deepen Anne’s own impressions of the man. But the revelations of the invalid and the nurse, one insolvent and in need, the other a wage-earning professional woman, help steer Anne Elliot toward a new conviction to be true to herself. These women, Mrs. Smith and Nurse Rooke, witness and attend the worldly birth of Mrs. Frederick Wentworth. The old friend and the nurse may bear the taint of convenient “goddesses from the machine” for some readers; nonetheless, Austen has prepared her readership by developing Anne Elliot’s interaction with women other than the ladies of the landed gentry who have traditionally surrounded and influenced her.
The position of monthly nurse (who also nurses the sick) is one of the few fee-paying professions open to women of good name. Austen, therefore, not only depicts a character in a role well-known to early readers but gives an essential cameo to a working woman who earns her own living. By recognizing Nurse Rooke’s “type,” recognizing the significance of the presence of a figure who portends life and death, we begin to understand Austen’s intentions in Persuasion’s final chapters.
What kind of woman sought this kind of profession, living in someone else’s household, among ever-changing sets of people, working hard over long hours, with dry spells in employment, and yet remaining dedicated to the mess of life and death? A work of fiction first published in the 1830s and promoted as the Remembrances of a Monthly Nurse sets forth why this choice of profession could suit some women. The author considers the question of why one would become a monthly nurse:
I detested dependence, and therefore could be neither a domestic governess nor a companion. Now, a monthly nurse in my opinion is a very great personage. She generally rules the whole house where she is an inmate, from the master downwards. What can exceed her authority for her brief four weeks? . . . I have never repented of the choice I made. (Oliver v)
In Nurse Rooke Austen presents a woman whom readers should take at face value, in the words of Mrs. Smith, as “‘shrewd, intelligent, sensible’” (P 155). Over the centuries, when noted at all, she has become a cipher and a gossip. Women like Austen would have endorsed her as an exemplar among these indispensable nurses. A reassessment of the role of the monthly nurse, and the intimate nature of her calling, brings forth for contemporary readers some of the knowledge assumed by Austen’s nineteenth-century audience.
NOTES
1A private duty nurse may be today’s closest equivalent.
2Two of Austen’s sisters-in-law died in childbed during her lifetime, Elizabeth (Mrs. Edward) Austen in 1808 and Frances (Mrs. Charles) Austen in 1814.
3Eliza Chute gifted Mrs. Smith’s nurse five shillings in 1799, following Augusta’s birth (Chute). According to his 1835 diary, Emma Austen’s brother-in-law Richard Seymour paid Mrs. Bond £16 for nursing wife Fanny (the baby died days after birth). The doctor, who called in two more doctors, may have been paid £18 to divide as appropriate. This section is heavily crossed out.
4See Jane Austen’s Letters for descriptions of sisters-in-law Mary Lloyd Austen and Elizabeth Bridges Austen during their confinements (1–2 December 1798).
