Writing Professional Ethos: Women Physicians and the Construction of Medical Authority in Victorian and Edwardian Print Culture

(RE)WRITING PROFESSIONAL ETHOS: WOMEN PHYSICIANS AND THE CONSTRUCTION OF MEDICAL AUTHORITY IN VICTORIAN AND EDWARDIAN PRINT CULTURE by KRISTIN E. KONDRLIK Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Department of English CASE WESTERN RESERVE UNIVERSITY May, 2016 2 CASE WESTERN RESERVE UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF GRADUATE STUDIES We hereby approve the dissertation of Kristin E. Kondrlik candidate for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy*. Committee Chair Kurt Koenigsberger Committee Member Kimberly Emmons Committee Member T. Kenneth Fountain Committee Member Susan Hinze Committee Member Athena Vrettos Date of Defense February 26, 2016 *We also certify that written approval has been obtained for any proprietary material contained therein 3 Table of Contents List of Figures……………………………………………………………………………..4 Acknowledgements………………………………………………………………………..5 Abstract……………………………………………………………………………………6 Introduction…………..…..………………………………………………………………..7 Chapter 1: Women’s Medical Journals: Creating a Counterpublic for Medical Women in the Magazine of the London School of Medicine for Women……………..……………..65 Chapter 2: The Woman Doctor Novel: Sophia Jex-Blake and Hilda Gregg Refiguring the Rhetorical Possibilities of the New Woman Novel...…………..……………..…………99 Chapter 3: Short Story Serials: L.T. Meade’s Constructions of Women Physicians’ Ethos in the Strand Magazine and Atalanta…………..………………………………………..143 Chapter 4: War Correspondence: Medical Access and Nationalism in the Writing of Caroline Matthews…………….………………………………………………………..169 Epilogue………………………………………………………………………………...207 Bibliography……………………………………………………………………………219 4 List of Figures Figure 1: George du Maurier, “The Coming Race,” Punch, September 1872…………..19 Figure 2: George du Maurier, “Our Pretty Doctor,” Punch, August 1870………………48 Figure 3: Frontispiece of the MLSOM, No. 1……………………………………………76 Figure 4: “W.H. Russell, ESQ. L.L.D.”, Punch, 1881………………………………....184 Figure 5: Excerpt from “The Diary of Lady Fire-Eater”, Punch, 1856………………...186 Figure 6: “Caroline Matthews, M.B., Ch.B.” from Experiences of a Woman Doctor in Serbia (1916)…………………………………………………………………..194 Figure 7: Arthur Wallis, “Eminent Woman Surgeon,” Punch, August 4, 1915………..214 5 Acknowledgements The completion of this dissertation is the result of the support I have received from numerous sources throughout my graduate career. I would first like to acknowledge my dissertation director and advisor, Kurt Koenigsberger, for his guidance over the years. Our conversations about this project, teaching, and learning to balance scholarship and life, were always supportive and encouraging. His feedback and guidance were vital in shaping this project into its current form. I also want to express my gratitude to other members of my committee – Kimberly Emmons, T. Kenneth Fountain, Athena Vrettos, and Susan Hinze. Each of these individuals offered critical support and advice on this project and on numerous other aspects of my graduate work throughout my years at CWRU, for which I am immeasurably grateful. The research work of this project would not have been possible without the support of numerous sources within CWRU. I am indebted to the English Department for the Adrian/Salomon Dissertation Fellowship, which provided me the time to perform key archival work in the British Library and the Wellcome Collection in London, and to Undergraduate Studies for the Eva L. Pancoast Memorial Fellowship, which provided funding for that trip. I am also grateful for the support of Case Western Reserve’s chapter of Phi Beta Kappa, which provided a research grant that allowed me to present an early version of some of this work at the North American Victorian Studies Association Conference. This conference provided formative feedback on the project in its middle stages. I would also like to thank my graduate colleagues in the English department at Case Western Reserve University, particularly Mary Assad, Cara Byrne, Nicole Emmelhainz, Catherine Forsa, and Jessica Slentz, and for their continued feedback and support throughout the dissertation process. Finally, this project would not have been possible without the love, patience, and support of my parents, my sisters, and my nephew. 6 (Re)Writing Professional Ethos: Women Physicians and the Construction of Medical Authority in Victorian and Edwardian Print Culture Abstract By KRISTIN E. KONDRLIK This dissertation argues that, by writing across the print culture of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, female physicians negotiated their ethos by representing themselves in ways more commensurate with their own experiences and contrary to existing representations. It draws on both literary and rhetorical traditions to analyze how writers addressed the incommensurability of print representations of women with the professional roles opened to them in the late nineteenth century – specifically, the medical profession. Though they were legally recognized as physicians in 1876, British women lacked the professional authority granted their male colleagues. Across the late Victorian and Edwardian periods, popular and professional discourses such as novels, short stories and professional journals often represented women as incompetent, weak, and unfit for professional work. As they undermined women’s professional ethos – the public’s and the profession’s perceptions of their goodwill, good sense and good character, these representations damaged both public reception of female physicians and their ability to act as professionals. In chapters on war correspondence, women’s medical magazines, serialized fiction, and New Woman novels, this dissertation traces the interventions of women physicians’ supporters into conversations about women in the medical profession between 1876 and 1914. These alternative representations aided in establishing female physicians’ ethos by positing new ways of thinking not only about medical women but also about the relationships between women, the professions and turn-of-the-century society. 7 Introduction In the mid nineteenth century, British women fought for legal reforms that would ensure that they would have the education and legal recognition necessary to enter the medical profession. Throughout the middle of the century, women patients and women hoping to become legally recognized as physicians articulated a growing public need for women to receive treatment by individuals of their own sex, especially for childbirth and gynecological ailments, and for women to be granted equal opportunities to pursue medical careers. Women recognized as physicians in other countries such as Elizabeth Garrett Anderson and Elizabeth Blackwell argued passionately in public and professional discourses in the 1860s and 1870s that women were just as capable of medical study as men; that female patients would be more comfortable with female physicians; and that women were “naturally” suited to the healing arts in ways that men were not. As Shirley Roberts notes in her biography of pioneering physician Sophia Jex-Blake, young women hoping to become physicians, including Edith Pechey and Sophia Jex-Blake lobbied the faculty at medical schools to allow them to take the classes necessary to prepare them for medical practice, at their own – increased – expense (Roberts 77-9). As they fought for the right to benefit from the training to which their male counterparts had access, these young women endured protests, derogations in the print publications of the general and medical publics, and numerous administrative roadblocks. After a lengthy battle that raged over the course of decades, women physicians in Britain eventually won the legal right to register as physicians. These women’s advocacy convinced lawmakers to pass the Medical Enabling Act in 1876, spearheaded in Parliament by MP Russell Gurney. 8 Roberts notes that this Act allowed British women to officially register as physicians with the British government for the first time (Roberts 138-9). These women’s triumph represented a moment of qualified success for professional women in the late nineteenth century. At this time, British women had unprecedented opportunities to adopt professional roles previously barred by legal, social, or educational restrictions. As Anne Witz notes in Professions and Patriarchy (1992), while lower class women had worked as semi-skilled or unskilled labor throughout the nineteenth century, opportunities began to open for women of all classes in the skilled professions in the latter half of the nineteenth century (Witz 29-31). In addition to more traditionally “feminine” skilled professions such as nursing and teaching, women were able to train for the first time for occupations formerly restricted to men, working as secretaries, telegraph operators, and court reporters, and in fields requiring an extensive amount of scientific and technical knowledge, such as engineering, physics, and medicine. Some medical historians, such as Catriona Blake in Charge of the Parasols: Women’s Entry into the Medical Profession (1990), have asserted that the Enabling Act and the establishment of the London School of Medicine for Women were the last barriers to women physicians’ full recognition as members of the medical profession (Blake 21). Although they had won a legal battle that ensured their credentials, women physicians still struggled with the general public’s and the profession’s continued association of women with the home and domesticity, rather than the workplace. The public

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