Mapping the Vagina: Nineteenth-Century Narratives of Scientific Specularity

Mapping the Vagina: Nineteenth-Century Narratives of Scientific Specularity Ashley Elizabeth Bashaw A dissertation Submitted in partial fulfillment of the Requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy University of Washington 2015 Reading Committee: Robert Abrams, Chair Alys Weinbaum Gillian Harkins Program Authorized to Offer Degree: English ©Copyright 2015 Ashley Elizabeth Bashaw University of Washington Abstract Mapping the Vagina: Nineteenth-Century Narratives of Scientific Specularity Ashley Elizabeth Bashaw Chair of the Supervisory Committee: Professor Robert Abrams English This dissertation tracks the close and variegated imbrications of nineteenth-century science, literature, and cartography. It argues for the co-existence and co-dependency of nineteenth- century gynecology and literature through an application of cartographic history and theory to the two disciplines. Identifying these cultural formations as co-emergent subsequently creates space for an identification of their shared productivity: a violent and violating medico-clinical gaze resulting in the construction of a unique discursive field of cultural production—maps of women’s bodies. Considering how gynecological maps deploy a clinical gaze that both racializes and genders bodies and in so doing reinscribes these bodies through relations of power remains a major aim of this project. A use of cartographic theory highlights the techniques and modes by which gynecological maps actually redefine and reconstruct bodies largely in service to white heteronormative aims. In this manner, gynecology, cartography, and literature are approached as political discourses whose objectives are frequently shared: the acquisition and maintenance of social power. At stake in an insistence on the centrality of mapping the female body to both nineteenth-century literature and gynecology is a destabilization of not only prevailing nineteenth-century presumptions about normative gender and sexuality, but also current presumptions that still remain attached to their nineteenth-century counterparts. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS The completion of this project was only possible with the assistance and encouragement of an array of individuals to whom I am incredibly grateful. I am indebted to the insights and mentorship that I consistently received from my committee, most especially from my chair, Robert E. Abrams, who remained a constant source of support throughout my graduate career, and from Alys E. Weinbaum, whose intellectual guidance was and remains central to my work. Next I would like to thank my friends, colleagues, and interlocutors, Alice Pedersen, Maya Smorodinsky, and David Holmberg. I truly value your friendship and your acumen. No part of my life, including this dissertation, would be possible without the consistent love and support of family. I am most grateful to my parents for a life-long appreciation of learning and for their unwavering support, and to my husband and children for their love and patience. TABLE OF CONTENTS List of Figures..................................................................................................................................ii Introduction .....................................................................................................................................1 Chapter One: Gynecology and Imperialism: Charting the “Dark Continent”...............................21 Chapter Two: Naturalism’s Spec[tac]ular[ly] Desirous Medico-Clinical Gaze............................74 Chapter Three: Gynecology as “Pregnant with the Secrets of Slavery”......................................135 Conclusion...................................................................................................................................200 Bibliography ...............................................................................................................................210 LIST OF FIGURES Figure Number Page 1. Thomas Baines, “Map of the Gold Fields of South-Eastern Africa”.........................................31 2. H. Rider Haggard, Sketched map from King Solomon’s Mines................................................50 3. Thomas Eakins, The Gross Clinic.............................................................................................95 4. Thomas Eakins, The Agnew Clinic............................................................................................96 Bashaw 1 Introduction “To catalogue the world is to appropriate it.” -J.B. Harley “It is all science, however—exploring a woman and a mound are pretty much the same.” -August 1848 letter from Josiah Nott to Ephriam Squire In April 1885, an anonymous female patient of Doctor Charles K. Mills, a neurologist to the Philadelphia Hospital and Professor of Diseases of the Mind and Nervous System in the Philadelphia Polyclinic, briefly appeared before a group of doctors at the Philadelphia Hospital.1 Equipped with a written copy of the long history of her gynecological history, the patient remained in the physical presence of the gathered physicians only long enough for them to “make note of her appearance” (535). The patient’s history reveals that she suffered for the majority of her life from an array of neurological disorders (most notably hystero-epileptic and hystero-cataleptic attacks) that were consistently attributed by her physicians to nymphomania. Having previously undergone multiple sexual surgeries to alleviate her symptoms with no relief (two clitoral excisions, an oophorectomy, and finally a complete clitoridectomy), the patient’s presence at this medical gathering represented her last attempt at a cure. Like other medical reports on hysterical women’s bodies in this period, the unnamed patient’s autobiographical report focuses on her sexual organs and sexual tendencies. What remains particularly significant about Mills’ address is its brevity, as once his patient’s own medical history is removed, his own discussion of the case remains rather negligible. Mills simplistically diagnoses his patient with nymphomania, or “an extreme and abnormal excitement of the sexual passion” that requires a location in her physical body (538). Yet rather than demonstrate a deceleration of clinical power, 1 This presentation was later reported by Doctor William Morrison, and published in the April 18, 1885 issue of the Medical Times. See Mills, M.D., Charles K. ""A Case of Nymphomania, with Hystero-Epilepsy and Peculiar Mental Perversions--The Results of Clitoridectomy and Oophorectomy--the Patient's History as Told by Herself"" Medical Times 15 (1885): 535-40. Print. Bashaw 2 Mills’ ability to simplistically summarize a rather complicated medical case showcases the degree to which the power of the medico-clinical gaze, and alongside it, the power of modern gynecology to map somatic deviance onto female bodies, was congealed by the late-nineteenth- century. In The Birth of the Clinic (1973) Michel Foucault locates the development of a “clinical gaze” in the increased reliance on visuality during the revolution of clinical practice from the eighteenth to nineteenth centuries.2 Foucault notes that with this ocular emphasis, disease could be visually manifested and mapped onto the body (9). He asserts that within the space of the clinic, the “clinical gaze has the paradoxical ability to hear a language as soon as it perceives a spectacle.” (108). In other words, the clinical gaze can “hear” the mapped language of somatic disease and deviance as soon as it sees it on the body. The degree to which the power of the clinical gaze was taken for granted by 1885 is evinced by Mills’ unexplained request that the patient be present for a few moments at the opening of his address: Gentlemen,--I have brought this woman before you for a few minutes in order that you may note her appearance…She has suffered for a number of years from a form of nervous or mental trouble, and has had at times hystero-epileptic and hystero-cataleptic attacks. She has had certain surgical operations performed, the results of which I shall speak later. I shall now ask her to go out while we discuss her case (534). This portion of Mills’ lecture is significant for the veiled linkages between clinical “seeing” and “saying” that occur in the patient’s presentation. While it was not unheard of to have a patient present during a nineteenth-century medical address, it was certainly uncommon, and the patient’s presence was usually associated with some kind of collective physical examination 2 Foucault, Michel. The Birth of the Clinic: An Archaeology of Medical Perception. New York: Pantheon Books, 1973. Print. Bashaw 3 whose purpose was clearly articulated by the lead physician. Although Mills gives a reason for the patient’s presence (he wishes his medical colleagues to “note her appearance”) there is neither further discussion of what he wishes his colleagues to note nor any explicit mention of her appearance in the remainder of his discussion. For readers learning of Mills’ case through its publication in the Medical Times, the lack of indication of what precisely in the patient’s appearance remains medically significant results in gross speculation about the patient’s original presence, her physical body, and her overall behaviors—was she clothed and to what degree? Was she standing erect, gazing back at this group of physicians, or reclining for gynecological scrutiny? Was she masked for anonymity or did she face them? Did she stand quietly or exhibit symptoms of epileptic or cataleptic attacks? Without

Load more