Domestic Interiors and Natural History
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Published:January 2025
Chapter 4, “Domestic Interiors and Natural History,” studies Maria Sibylla Merian (1647–1717), a female naturalist who depended on the knowledge of Indigenous and enslaved women in her natural history of Suriname. Confronting Merian’s celebration as a female pioneer in art history while examining her inextricable role in plantation economies, this chapter contextualizes Merian’s work within larger eighteenth-century debates about reproduction, abortion, and domesticity, considering her work in relation to the Dutch genre scenes of domestic interiors. Merian’s illustrations and text engage with a crisis in domestic interiors in the plantation and pose questions about kinship, reproduction, and domesticity that continue to frame public policy today.
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