| Description |
1 online resource (xv, 270 pages) : illustrations |
| Physical Medium |
polychrome |
| Description |
text file |
| Bibliography |
Includes bibliographical references (pages 245-261) and index. |
| Contents |
Reading Illness. Invalid Ideology. Culture, Dialogue, and Discourse. Invalid Women -- Ch. 1. Defining the Feminine/Defining the Invalid: Women and Medicine in the Mid-Nineteenth Century. Women's Health in the Mid-Nineteenth Century. Physicians and Women. Medical Discourse, Cultural Definition -- Ch. 2. Threat of Invalidism: Responsibility and Reward in Domestic and Feminist Fiction. Fiction Figuring Women. Invalid Mothers. Feminist Invalid -- Ch. 3. (Super) "Natural" Invalidism: Male Writers and the Mind/Body Problem. Domestic and the Romantic (Super)Natural. Mind/Body Problem. Making Natural Art of Women. Natural Pharmakon in the Garden. A Return to the Garden: The Healthy Invalid. "Feverish Poet" -- Ch. 4. Writing Cure: Women Writers and the Art of Illness. Mental Healing at the Turn of the Century. Writing Cure. Art of Illness. Happy Endings -- Ch. 5. Fighting (with) Illness: Success and the Invalid Woman. Success and the Invalid Woman. Success, Class, and Health. Failing Health. Invalid Men and the Ideology of "Separate Spheres" -- Ch. 6. Economics of Illness: Working the Invalid Woman. Willpower. Clinical Ethics and the Invalid Economy. Conclusion: Invalidism and the Female Body Politic. Political Representation of Feminine Illness. |
| Summary |
In this imaginative work of cultural and literary history, Diane Price Herndl examines the tensions found in literary representations of feminine illness. Using medical texts, art, and advertising as well as major works of fiction, Price Herndl argues that such representations were not "natural" but were instead ideologically motivated. While invalid women in American fiction sometimes upheld and sometimes challenged dominant social and medical practice, Price Herndl contends that the discourse of feminine illness was a battleground for powerful forces that sought to define women's role in society even after feminism's emergence. The figure of the invalid female must, she says, be understood as a highly politicized figure. Price Herndl looks first at mid-nineteenth-century medical theories that defined women as fundamentally "invalid." She then turns to important literary texts, including works by Harriet Beecher Stowe, E.D.E.N. Southworth, Laura Curtis Bullard, Washington Irving, Edgar Allan Poe, and Nathaniel Hawthorne, to show that male and female authors represented invalid women differently. Price Herndl contends that the figure of the ill woman conveniently resolved problems of the changing culture for nineteenth-century authors of both sexes. Price Herndl then traces the image of invalid women from the turn of the century to World War II, using texts by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Edith Wharton, Ellen Glasgow, Henry James, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Tillie Olsen, as well as the film Dark Victory. Despite dramatic changes in both medical practices and women's place in society, fictional representations remained strikingly stable and politically conservative, Price Herndl argues, even when the author's intent was otherwise. |
| Access |
Use copy Restrictions unspecified MiAaHDL |
| Reproduction |
Electronic reproduction. [S.l.] : HathiTrust Digital Library, 2010. MiAaHDL |
| System Details |
Master and use copy. Digital master created according to Benchmark for Faithful Digital Reproductions of Monographs and Serials, Version 1. Digital Library Federation, December 2002. http://purl.oclc.org/DLF/benchrepro0212 MiAaHDL |
| Processing Action |
digitized 2010 HathiTrust Digital Library committed to preserve MiAaHDL |
| Local Note |
eBooks on EBSCOhost EBSCO eBook Subscription Academic Collection - North America |
| Subject |
American fiction -- 19th century -- History and criticism.
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American fiction. |
| Chronological Term |
19th century |
| Subject |
Women and literature -- United States -- History -- 19th century.
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Women and literature. |
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United States. |
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History. |
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Women and literature -- United States -- History -- 20th century.
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| Chronological Term |
20th century |
| Subject |
American fiction -- 20th century -- History and criticism.
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Women with disabilities -- United States -- History.
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Women with disabilities. |
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Women with disabilities in literature.
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Women with disabilities in literature. |
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Invalids in literature.
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Invalids in literature. |
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Diseases in literature.
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Diseases in literature. |
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Sick in literature.
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Sick in literature. |
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Medicine in Literature. |
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Literature, Modern -- history. |
|
Women. |
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Women's Health. |
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United States. |
| Chronological Term |
1800-1999 |
| Genre/Form |
Electronic books.
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Criticism, interpretation, etc.
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History.
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| Other Form: |
Print version: Price Herndl, Diane, 1959- Invalid women. Chapel Hill : University of North Carolina Press, ©1993 0807821039 (DLC) 92021433 (OCoLC)26674874 |
| ISBN |
0585025746 (electronic book) |
|
9780585025742 (electronic book) |
|
0807863904 (University of North Carolina Press ; electronic book) |
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9780807863909 (University of North Carolina Press ; electronic book) |
|
0807821039 (alkaline paper) |
|
9780807821039 (alkaline paper) |
|
0807844063 (paperback ; alkaline paper) |
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9780807844069 (paperback ; alkaline paper) |
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