Female physicians in American literature : abortion in 19th-century literature and culture
Bibliographic Information
Female physicians in American literature : abortion in 19th-century literature and culture
Margaret Jay Jessee
(Routledge focus on literature)(Routledge focus)
Routledge, 2022
Available at / 1 libraries
Note
Summary: "Female Physicians in American Literature traces the woman physician character throughout her varying depictions in 19th-century literature, from her appearance in sensational fiction as an evil abortionist to her more well-known idyllic, feminine presence in novels of realism and regionalism. "Murderess," "hag," "She-Devil," "the instrument of the very vilest crime known in the annals of hell"-these are just a few descriptions of women abortionists in popular 19th-century sensation fiction. In novels of regionalism, however, she is often depicted as moral, feminine, and self-sacrificing. This dichotomy, Jessee argues, reveals two opposing literary approaches to registering the national fears of all that both women and abortion evoke: the terrifying threats to white, masculine, Anglo-American male supremacy"--Provided by publisher
Includes index
Description and Table of Contents
Description
Female Physicians in American Literature traces the woman physician character throughout her varying depictions in 19th-century literature, from her appearance in sensational fiction as an evil abortionist to her more well-known idyllic, feminine presence in novels of realism and regionalism. "Murderess," "hag," "She-Devil," "the instrument of the very vilest crime known in the annals of hell"-these are just a few descriptions of women abortionists in popular 19th-century sensational fiction. In novels of regionalism, however, she is often depicted as moral, feminine, and self-sacrificing. This dichotomy, Jessee argues, reveals two opposing literary approaches to registering the national fears of all that both women and abortion evoke: the terrifying threats to white, masculine, Anglo-American male supremacy.
Table of Contents
Preface
Introduction: The Woman Physician Character and Anglo-American Nationalism
Fearing the Woman Physician as Trope
Abortion and Nationalism
Chapter 1: An "Atrocious Foreign Woman": White Nationalism and the Abortionist
The Sensation of Madame Restell
Embodying the Abortionist
Chapter 2: The Corporeal Legacy of the Abortionist
Abortion and Melodrama
Sensation as White Supremacy
Chapter 3: "Truly Womanly Work": Sentiment and Reform Fiction
Radical Gender in the Social Problem Novel
The "Abominations" of the Woman Physician
Chapter 4: Absorbing the Terror: The Idealized Woman Physician
Curing White Male Nationality
The Woman Physician as Christ Figure
Conclusion: Curing the Sentimental Feminist with the "Doctress"
Genre and Gendered Medicine
Queering the Doctress
Affective Metanarratives
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