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BRUCE, SUSAN. "The Flying Island and Female Anatomy: Gynaecology and Power in Gulliver's Travels," Genders, 2 (July 1988), 60-76.
Gulliver's Travels and Mary Toft, the "rabbet woman," were connected "more than once in 1727," because, Ms. Bruce argues, they were parts of "the debate over female power taking place ... a power which revolved around a woman's control over her own body and her power over, or in relation to, discourse." She places the Toft fraud within the struggle between physicians and midwives (which began in the seventeenth century) over control not only of birth but also of abortion and contraception.
Ms. Bruce epitomizes the conflict with the history of Elizabeth Cellier, "who played some role in the Popish Plot of 1678"; she was prosecuted "because she was an articulate and hiérate midwife who insisted on...