Emma Bovari’s sisters: doctors’ wives in the Victorian female prose
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.21638/spbu09.2019.407Abstract
The purpose of the essay is to analyze the images of doctors’ wives in the works of British women writers during the second half of the 19th century and to consider the main trends in their evolution. The brilliant study by T. Sparks devoted to doctors in British Victorian novels imparts the need for considering the images of doctors’ wives in Victorian female fiction. The materials for our study included works by E.Gaskell, D.M.Mulock Craik, Mrs. Henry Wood, A.I.Thackeray, M.E.Braddon and G.Eliot published between 1851 and 1872. The study shows that the image of a doctor’s wife as her husband’s victim, that had dominated in earlier works, was quite suddenly replaced by the image of a doctor’s wife destroying her spouse. The transition can be explained by the weakening of the positions of Romanticism, decrease of public interest in Gothic horrors, and a departure from the glorification of a criminal typical of the Newgate novel. At the same time, this change may be explained by the publication of G.Flaubert’s Madame Bovary. However, its influence should not be exaggerated, even if an authoress (Braddon) overtly recognized the secondariness of her work to it. The rise of the so-called ‘First wave’ of feminism should also be taken into consideration as a significant factor influencing the evolution of the image of a doctor’s wife in the Victorian novels by women writers. Concurrently, their sympathy towards men and their tendency to blame the wives for family tragedies are quite unexpected for feminist fiction.
Keywords:
19th-century British novel, female prose of the Victorian period, doctor’s wife image in fiction, first-wave feminism, domestic violence
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References
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BMJ 1914 — One hundred years ago: The doctor in fiction in 1814. The British Medical Journal. 1914, 1 (2770): 252–254.
Boiko 2005 — Boiko K. Reading and (re)writing class: Elizabeth Gaskell’s “Wives and daughters.” Victorian Literature and Culture. 2005, 33 (1): 85–106.
Byatt 2002 — Byatt A. S. Scenes from a provincial life. The Guardian. 2002, July 27. https://www.theguardian.com/books/2002/jul/27/classics.asbyatt (access date: 15.02.2019).
Cohen 1995 — Cohen M. Sisters: Relation and rescue in nineteenth-century British novels and paintings. Madison: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press; London; Toronto: Associated University Press, 1995. 187 p.
E. D. 1864 — E. D. Miss Braddon’s Novels. The Reader. A Journal of Literature, Science, and Art. 1864, October: 474–475.
Edwards 2015 — Edwards J. S. Technology of the gothic in literature and culture: technogothics. New York; London: Routledge, 2015. 198 p.
Elliott 1994 — Elliott D. W. The female visitor and the marriage of classes in Gaskell’s “North and south”. Nineteenth-Century Literature. 1994, 49 (1): 1–49.
Fletcher 1925 — Fletcher G. The life and career of Dr. William Palmer of Rugely: Together with a full account of the murder of John P. Cook and a short account of his trial in May 1856. London: T. Fisher, Unwin, 1925. 198 p.
Golden 2006 — Golden C. J. Censoring her sensationalism: Mary Elizabeth Braddon and “The doctor’s wife”. In: Victorian sensations: Essays on a scandalous genre. Harrison K., Fantina R. (eds.). Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 2006. P. 29–40.
Gottlieb 2013 — Gottlieb E. Walter Scott and contemporary theory. London; New Delhi; New York: Bloomsbury, 2013. 187 p.
Hollingsworth 1963 — Hollingsworth K. The Newgate novel, 1830–1847: Bulwer, Ainsworth, Dickens and Thackeray. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1963. 279 p.
Kennedy 2004 — Kennedy M. The ghost in the clinic: Gothic medicine and curious fiction in Samuel Warren’s “Diary of a late physician.” Victorian Literature and Culture. 2004, 32 (2): 327–351.
Loudon 1992 — Loudon I. Medical practitioners 1750–1850 and the period of medical reform in Britain. In: Medicine in society. Wear A. (ed.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992. P. 219–248.
Mourao 2001 — Mourao M. Negotiating Victorian feminism: Anne Thackeray Ritchie’s short fiction. Tulsa Studies in Women’s Literature. 2001, 20 (1): 57–75.
Newton 1859 — Newton A. The case of Thomas Smethurst, M. D.: his trial, dentence, tespite, and pardon for Willful murder and prosecution for bigamy. London: Routledge, Warne and Routledge, 1859. 135 p.
Price 2015 — Price Ch. Medical bluebeards: the domestic threat of the poisoning doctor in the popular fiction of Ellen Wood. In: Victorian medicine and popular culture. Penner L., Sparks T. (eds.). London: Pickering and Chatto, 2015. P. 81–94.
Rouxeville 1977 — Rouxeville A. The reception of Flaubert in Victorian England. Comparative Literature Studies. 1977, 14 (3): 274–284.
Rouxeville 1987–1988 — Rouxeville A. Attitudes to Flaubert. An investigation. Nineteenth-Century French Studies. 1987–1988, 16 (1–2): 132–140.
Sparks 1999 — Sparks T. Fiction becomes her. Representations of female character in Mary Braddon’s “The doctor’s wife.” In: Beyond sensation: Mary Elizabeth Braddon in Context. Tromp M., Gilbert P. K., Haynie A. (eds.). New York: State University of New York Press, 1999. P. 197–209.
Sparks 2009 — Sparks Th. T. The doctor in the Victorian novel: family practices. Farnham; Burlington: Ashgate, 2009. 186 p.
Stephen 1857 —Stephen F. “Madame Bovary.” Saturday Review. 1857, 42: 40–41.
Surawicz, Jacobson 2009 —Surawicz B., Jacobson B. Doctors in fiction: Lessons from literature. New York: Radcliffe Publishing, 2009. 202 p.
Talairach-Vielmas 2010 — Talairach-Vielmas L. Wilkie Collins, medicine and the gothic. Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2010. 224 p.
Watson 2004 — Watson K. Poisoned lives. English poisoners and their victims. London: Hambledon, 2004. 268 p.
Woolton 2016 — Woolton S. Byronic heroes in nineteenth-century women writing and screen adaptation. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016. 253 p.
Worthington 2012 — Worthington H. The Newgate novel. In: The Oxford history of the novel in English. Vol. 3: The nineteenth-century novel 1820–1880. Kucich J., Bourne Taylor J. (eds.). Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012. P. 123–136.
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