1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910455271903321

Autore

Sparks Tabitha

Titolo

The doctor in the Victorian novel [[electronic resource] ] : family practices / / Tabitha Sparks

Pubbl/distr/stampa

Farnham, Surrey, England ; ; Burlington, VT, : Ashgate Pub., 2009

ISBN

1-317-03541-0

1-317-03540-2

1-282-29517-9

9786612295171

0-7546-9640-5

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (187 p.)

Disciplina

823.8093543

823.8'093543-dc22

Soggetti

English fiction - 19th century - History and criticism

Physicians in literature

Medicine in literature

Marriage in literature

Electronic books.

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Note generali

Description based upon print version of record.

Nota di bibliografia

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Nota di contenuto

Cover; Contents; Acknowledgements; Introduction; 1 Doctoring the Marriage Plot: Harriet Martineau's Deerbrook and George Eliot's Middlemarch; 2 Textual Healing: George MacDonald's Adela Cathcart; 3 Marital Malpractice at Mid-Century: Braddon's The Doctor's Wife and Gaskell's Wives and Daughters; 4 Myopic Medicine and Far-Sighted Femininity: Wilkie Collins's Armadale and Heart and Science; 5 New Women, Avenging Doctors: Gothic Medicine in Bram Stoker and Arthur Machen; 6 The "Fair Physician": Female Doctors and the Late-Century Marriage Plot

Conclusion - "The Overstimulated Nerve Ceases to Respond": Arthur Conan Doyle's Medical ModernismBibliography; Index

Sommario/riassunto

Following the decline of the marriage plot in Victorian novels by a range of novelists, including Harriet Martineau, George Eliot, Elizabeth



Gaskell, George MacDonald, and Bram Stoker, Tabitha Sparks argues that a narrative's stance towards scientific reason is revealed in the figure of the doctor. Novels with romantic doctors deny the authority of empiricism, while those with clinically minded doctors uphold the determining logic of science and threaten the novel's romantic plot.