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Medical Treatment And Care Of Hospitalized Maine Women, 1874-1882, Jenny Higgins

Senior Scholar Papers

The construction of the ideal Victorian woman as an invalid, weak, delicate, and perpetually prone to illness could not have been maintained without the support of the medical profession. Late nineteenth-century medical ideas embodied and incorporated, explicitly or implicitly, social ideas about women-their nature, role, abilities, and limitations. The medical profession was persuasive and powerful in shaping women's roles, and this influence took on a wide variety of forms. This paper examines one of these forms-the treatment of women in a hospital setting, and how this treatment both reflected and perpetuated existing social understandings of Victorian femininity and gender roles. …