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

Kondrlik, Kristin E
http://orcid.org/0000-0002-0087-2437
http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=case1459462312

Abstract Details

2016, Doctor of Philosophy, Case Western Reserve University, English.
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.
Kurt Koenigsberger (Committee Chair)
Kimberly Emmons (Committee Member)
T. Kenny Fountain (Committee Member)
Susan Hinze (Committee Member)
Athena Vrettos (Committee Member)
239 p.
British and Irish Literature; Gender; Gender Studies; History; Literature; Medicine; Rhetoric; Womens Studies

Recommended Citations

Citations

  • Kondrlik, K. E. (2016). (Re)Writing Professional Ethos: Women Physicians and the Construction of Medical Authority in Victorian and Edwardian Print Culture [Doctoral dissertation, Case Western Reserve University]. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=case1459462312

    APA Style (7th edition)

  • Kondrlik, Kristin. (Re)Writing Professional Ethos: Women Physicians and the Construction of Medical Authority in Victorian and Edwardian Print Culture. 2016. Case Western Reserve University, Doctoral dissertation. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center, http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=case1459462312.

    MLA Style (8th edition)

  • Kondrlik, Kristin. "(Re)Writing Professional Ethos: Women Physicians and the Construction of Medical Authority in Victorian and Edwardian Print Culture." Doctoral dissertation, Case Western Reserve University, 2016. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=case1459462312

    Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition)

case1459462312
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© 2016, all rights reserved.
This open access ETD is published by Case Western Reserve University School of Graduate Studies and OhioLINK.