Beyond Nightingale: The Transformation of Nursing in Victorian and World War I Literature
| Autor: | Benham, M. Renee |
|---|---|
| Jazyk: | angličtina |
| Rok vydání: | 2017 |
| Předmět: |
Gender Studies
British and Irish Literature History Literature Medicine Nursing Public Health Womens Studies Sanitation Victorian Victorian literature Nineteenth-Century Literature Nursing History Victorian Nursing History of Medicine sanitary reform Ladies Sanitary Association World War I Great War memoir |
| Druh dokumentu: | Text |
| Popis: | Only relatively recently has paid nursing come to be viewed as a respectable profession for women. Early-nineteenth-century literature describes hired nurses as low-class, slovenly women who smoked, drank, and abused their patients. Middle-class British society feared that hired nurses were low-class, ignorant, unsympathetic, unfeminine, and too independent from men. Beyond Nightingale examines how literature from the early nineteenth century through the early twentieth century helped alleviate these fears and altered the public perception of nursing by presenting paid nurses as middle-class women who were sympathetic, selfless, and subservient to doctors. Many authors suggested that nursing ability was not dependent upon natural femininity or personal character, but relied on training and experience. By altering the public’s perception of paid nursing, literary portrayals of nursing facilitated its transformation from an extension of the feminine, domestic sphere into an efficient medical profession for women. Beyond Nightingale examines works by Charles Dickens, Wilkie Collins, William Thackeray, and L. T. Meade, among others, to challenge the prevailing myth that Florence Nightingale single-handedly reformed nursing in the mid-1850s. Using World War I propaganda, periodicals, novels, and memoirs, Benham also explores how the desire for efficiency was encouraged and contested in literary portrayals of nursing from 1900 – 1918. Great War nursing literature emphasized efficiency as the most important objective in nursing care. As a result, sympathy was increasingly devalued because it hindered the efficiency of the medical machine. This tension between sympathetic and efficient care has not been resolved, but continues to plague the medical profession today.Beyond Nightingale considers not only traditional literary works, but also a variety of non-literary archival sources including nursing manuals, sanitary pamphlets, women’s periodicals, and Voluntary Aid Detachment (V.A.D.) documents. Benham demonstrates how both literary and non-literary texts informed one another and contributed to a common conversation about the transformation of nursing care. With this wealth of sources, Benham traces the evolution of the literary representation of nursing from a denigrated and despised last resort for poor widows to an esteemed, efficient profession for middle-class British women. |
| Databáze: | Networked Digital Library of Theses & Dissertations |
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