TY - BOOK AU - Price Herndl,Diane TI - Invalid women: figuring feminine illness in American fiction and culture, 1840-1940 SN - 0585025746 AV - PS374.W6 P74 1993eb U1 - 813.009/352042 20 PY - 1993/// CY - Chapel Hill PB - University of North Carolina Press KW - American fiction KW - 19th century KW - History and criticism KW - Women and literature KW - United States KW - History KW - 20th century KW - Women with disabilities KW - Women with disabilities in literature KW - Invalids in literature KW - Diseases in literature KW - Sick in literature KW - Roman am�ericain KW - 19e si�ecle KW - Histoire et critique KW - Femmes et litt�erature KW - �Etats-Unis KW - Histoire KW - 20e si�ecle KW - Handicap�ees KW - Handicap�ees dans la litt�erature KW - Invalides dans la litt�erature KW - Maladies dans la litt�erature KW - Malades dans la litt�erature KW - LITERARY CRITICISM KW - American KW - General KW - bisacsh KW - fast KW - Medicine in Literature KW - Literature, Modern KW - history KW - Women KW - Women's Health KW - Electronic books KW - Criticism, interpretation, etc N1 - Includes bibliographical references (pages 245-261) and index; Reading Illness; Invalid Ideology; Culture, Dialogue, and Discourse; Invalid Women --; Ch. 1; Defining the Feminine/Defining the Invalid: Women and Medicine in the Mid-Nineteenth Century; Women's Health in the Mid-Nineteenth Century; Physicians and Women; Medical Discourse, Cultural Definition --; Ch. 2; The Threat of Invalidism: Responsibility and Reward in Domestic and Feminist Fiction; Fiction Figuring Women; Invalid Mothers; The Feminist Invalid --; Ch. 3; (Super) "Natural" Invalidism: Male Writers and the Mind/Body Problem; The Domestic and the Romantic (Super)Natural; The Mind/Body Problem; Making Natural Art of Women; The Natural Pharmakon in the Garden; A Return to the Garden: The Healthy Invalid; The "Feverish Poet" --; Ch. 4; The Writing Cure: Women Writers and the Art of Illness; Mental Healing at the Turn of the Century; The Writing Cure; The Art of Illness; Happy Endings --; Ch. 5; Fighting (with) Illness: Success and the Invalid Woman; Success and the Invalid Woman; Success, Class, and Health; Failing Health; Invalid Men and the Ideology of "Separate Spheres" --; Ch. 6; Economics of Illness: Working the Invalid Woman; Willpower; Clinical Ethics and the Invalid Economy; Conclusion: Invalidism and the Female Body Politic; The Political Representation of Feminine Illness; Electronic reproduction; [S.l.]; HathiTrust Digital Library; 2010 N2 - In this imaginative work of cultural and literary history, Diane Price Herndl examines the tensions found in literary representations of feminine illness. Using medical texts, art, and advertising as well as major works of fiction, Price Herndl argues that such representations were not "natural" but were instead ideologically motivated. While invalid women in American fiction sometimes upheld and sometimes challenged dominant social and medical practice, Price Herndl contends that the discourse of feminine illness was a battleground for powerful forces that sought to define women's role in society even after feminism's emergence. The figure of the invalid female must, she says, be understood as a highly politicized figure. Price Herndl looks first at mid-nineteenth-century medical theories that defined women as fundamentally "invalid." She then turns to important literary texts, including works by Harriet Beecher Stowe, E.D.E.N. Southworth, Laura Curtis Bullard, Washington Irving, Edgar Allan Poe, and Nathaniel Hawthorne, to show that male and female authors represented invalid women differently. Price Herndl contends that the figure of the ill woman conveniently resolved problems of the changing culture for nineteenth-century authors of both sexes. Price Herndl then traces the image of invalid women from the turn of the century to World War II, using texts by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Edith Wharton, Ellen Glasgow, Henry James, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Tillie Olsen, as well as the film Dark Victory. Despite dramatic changes in both medical practices and women's place in society, fictional representations remained strikingly stable and politically conservative, Price Herndl argues, even when the author's intent was otherwise UR - https://libproxy.firstcity.edu.my:8443/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&scope=site&db=nlebk&AN=1783 ER -