Female Physicians In American Literature

Download or read book Female Physicians in American Literature written by Margaret Jay Jessee and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2021-12-27 with total page 136 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.