AbstractsWomens Studies

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. Advisors/Committee Members: Koenigsberger, Kurt (Committee Chair).