Set in England’s Regency era, When He Was Wicked explores the cultural stance of the time period and frames childbearing as a pressure that distorts the loving foundations of marriage. Throughout the novel, the female characters—particularly Francesca—feel marked pressure to marry so that they might conceive, raise children, and devote themselves to maternity and the home. Social pressures are so extreme that the women in the novel feel little agency over their fates and bodies. For example, within a day of John’s death, Lord Winston arrives to inform Michael that the Committee for Privileges will need a witness at the birth of Francesca’s child because “if her ladyship gives birth to a girl, and there is no one present to witness it, what is to stop her from switching the babe with a boy?” (31). This moment underscores the reality of the time period that Francesca’s body doesn’t just belong to herself but also to other people’s interests. Subsequent images of the maids inspecting Francesca’s bedsheets after she miscarries underscore this notion, as do the countless inquiries into her status and plans to remarry and have children in the years following John’s death. Her child loss demands a witness, the family demands an heir, and the season demands a bridegroom. Her society imposes expectations on her that limit her agency. At the same time, when Francesca tells Michael in Hyde Park that she wants a baby, she’s learning to decipher her own personal longings from her society’s customary demands.

Despite Francesca’s desire for her children, her interior life around fertility is shaped by self-blame, fear, and shame. Because she has had trouble conceiving in the past, she feels like she has failed—failed to satisfy others’ expectations, to make John happy, to ease her own grief, and to realize her own desires: “And the worst part of it is,” she tells Michael in the Hyde Park scene, “maybe I can’t even have children. It took me two years to conceive with John, and look how I mucked that up” (99). The verb “mucked” underscores how Francesca is treating the loss as a failure of her own womanhood. Her self-judgment intensifies her determination to conceive, inspiring her later bargain with herself: to consider Michael’s proposal only if she becomes pregnant. Her careful accounting of her menstrual cycles underscores her desperation to perform her womanhood correctly and, in turn, to pursue her desires as meticulously. Three years into her marriage to Michael, Francesca is still counting her cycles, hiding the tally marks in the back of her desk drawer so that Michael won’t see it. The hatch marks are a record of a body that has been asked to perform.

Michael’s abiding love for Francesca offers a resolution to her fertility anxiety. After her period confirms that there will be no child this time, she insists that she can’t marry him if she can’t conceive; however, Michael immediately tells her, “I don’t care if you’re barren […] I don’t care if you deliver a litter of puppies. […] All I care about […] is that you’re mine” (344). Michael asserts that his love for Francesca is unrelated to her ability to conceive; he loves her for her and not because of her ability to procreate. This sentiment subverts the customs of the era that equated a woman’s worth with her fertility. Michael thus subverts Lord Winston’s earlier view of Francesca’s body as state property. The novel thus implies that fertility ruins intimate life when it’s the substance of or sole reason for the marriage; conversely, pursuing motherhood and having children can be a way to deepen a marriage when the desire for a family originates from within, not from societal pressure.