annotated bibloiography

Annotated bibliography for English 701

Patricia Waters-Decker

March 20, 2008

I have chosen to compare the scientific discourse of Florence Nightingale with her personal writings and, also with her contemporaries, other women science writers of her time.
This was a difficult project for me, as I discovered that there was a need to look at the sociology of that time as well and I have never written this type of Bibliography before. I have more references, but we were only required to provide 6-8.

1. Benjamin, Marina, Editor. “Science and Sensibility: Gender and scientific Enquiry, 1780 – 1945”. Basil Blackwell. Oxford, UK. 1991.

This book is a compilation of chapters by various authors, distinguished in their disciplines as Biologists, Chemists, philosophers and Historians. Ms. Benjamin is an author of several articles on the history of science and women.

This book raises the questions and investigates 1) the relationship between the sexes and how they “became enshrined as natural laws”? 2) How were gender relations scientized? And 3) how can feminists interpret the relationship, actual and symbolic? (p.2)

The chapters give an historical perspective of the many influences on the sciences, politics, gender relations and the ascribed roles of men and women in Victorian society (1870) to post war 1945. It is divided into three parts:

1) Women practitioners of science

2) Gender representation in science

3) Science and feminism.

Ms. Benjamin acknowledges that, in 1991, “the relevance of the natural sciences to major issues of concern with women’s history has only recently been recognized” (p 23). Science has its roots in patriarchy and women in science have been overlooked by historians and feminist scholars alike. The existing literature of the time concerned itself with the sociology of women in science, not their contributions to the fields.

Historians like Margaret Rossiter (p.3) looked at the struggles and strategies of survival of women scientists in America. Her work reviews the gender stratification; the difficulties women face gaining access to education and training in science and the prejudices they face when they succeed. Her work reveals the special survival strategies these women had to develop because of their transgression of traditional female boundaries.

The chapter titled “Women, Medicine and Sanitary Reform I had hoped, would be the focus of my interest in this book, since this is where Florence Nightingale made her mark, but, by the author’s direct admission “There will be one major omission, the work of Florence Nightingale. Albeit she is now generally associated with nursing …But while she was by far the most successful woman in sanitary reform in Victorian Britain, she was quite exceptional in working… in the male areas of engineering and government administration. Her sanitary work really demands a chapter of its own.”(p 63). So I examined the rest of the book to find some very pertinent coverage of the area on male dominance of science, women’s perceived role in science (more as subject and objects for investigation and most of their contributions marginalized). Darwinism perceived the female brain as being too small and unevolved to accommodate the concepts of logic, problem solving and reasoning, but only evolved sufficiently to reproduce and nurture.

I felt it was important to understand the viewpoint of the Victorian era on science, women and women in science to be able to understand the writing of Florence Nightingale. Her position in her world was influenced by her society, her religious beliefs and her family, all of which she defied. I want to look at the various publications she wrote to see how they differed from the norms of her times and if they differed from each other, based on her “audience” or genre.

2. Gates, Barbara and Ann Shteir. (Eds). “Natural Eloquence: Women reinscribe science”. University of Wisconsin Press. Madison, Wisconsin. 1997.

This is another collection of essays by authors and distinguished Professors of English, Teaching and Research, Humanities, Geology, Women’s studies; Literature and Linguistics form various Universities and Colleges around the world. This book discusses the popularization of science and the writings of women in science to bring science, in their vernacular, to audiences beyond the elite and learned cultures. The editors acknowledge that the “Women question in science” and the “science question in feminism” have caused the writing of women in popularization of science to be overlooked. In recent years, feminist researchers on women, gender, and the history of women and science have amassed evidence to document ways in which gendered thinking about women and science has limited access to scientific cultures (p 4).

This book acknowledges the contributions of some of the same authors from my first reference, but I found, that Ms. Gates and Ms. Shteir have tapped into essays that reveal how the women writers managed to “get around” some of the negative opinion of society involving women science writers. They did not write for publication in the scientific journals, but rather to the public. By writing, in periodicals, to the uninformed, women and children, staying within the realms of “natural sciences and religiosity, they managed to make popular science writing an accepted profession. (I think it was because they were not trying to compete with men).

Stephan Jay Gould writes, in chapter 2, about the “Invisible Woman”. He begins with his experience of reading a revised (and official) version of the history of twentieth Century Russia, which excludes Joseph Stalin. He cannot conceive how, even if they didn’t agree with his politics and/ or exploits they could simply ignore that he ever existed. This is how he feels history has been written about cultural evolution – to the complete exclusion of women, making them invisible. Until recently (1904), women were not admitted to scientific societies. Even then they played subsidiary roles. “Women with scientific interests were therefore confined to a narrow range of marginal activities, away from (or at least auxiliary to) the centers of prestige and innovation in research and publishing (p.29).

The book goes on to include the works of many women writers of the 1800s and 1900s. Florence Nightingale is not mentioned in this book, but I feel that, again, by understanding the attitudes of the society of her time, and the writings of some of her contemporaries, I will better understand her writings.

3. McDonald, Lynn; editor. “Florence Nightingale on Society and Politics, Philosophy, Science, Education and Literature: Volume 5 of the Collected works of Florence Nightingale.” Wilfred Lauriel University Press. Waterloo, Ontario, Canada. 2003.

This volume incorporates a collection of letters, publications, and manuscripts written by Florence Nightingale from a total of over 150 archives, and private collections world wide. Many of the writings and letters related to the topics in the title are accompanied by introduction from the editor, Ms. Nightingale’s contemporaries and mentors. The introduction to this volume chronicles her life and work and introduces one of her earliest mentors of statistics, L.A.J. Quetelet.

The Editor acknowledges that “roughly one quarter of this volume deals with the Nightingale/ Quetelet connection either directly using his work or, at least, how she was influenced by him” (p.11). In this volume many of her notes and accompanying statistics are used to exemplify how she developed her theories and how she attempted to utilize Quetelet’s methodology.

Letters from friends and mentors are included and with some of her diary entries and letters to others, we are given an in depth look into the thinking and working of Florence Nightingale. The final chapter of this book talks about her extensive library and love of literature. Her letters often quote from various pieces or offer recommendations for the reading of one or another of her favorites. She did not read that she did not take/make notes.

Ms. Nightingale was a prolific writer and correspondent. She wrote about everything with which she was associated. She made copies of all her personal correspondences and careful volumes of her publications and left them to the executors of her estate, presumably to be destroyed after her death. How could she have know that her every thought and word would be memorialized by historians, biographers and feminist writers 100 years in the future?

4. Bullough, Vern, Bonnie Bullough and Marietta Stanton, Editors. “Florence Nightingale and her Era: A collection of new scholarship”. Garland Publishing, Inc. New York, N.Y. 1990.

This book is a result of a multidisciplinary conference (date not given) at the University of Buffalo, which was designed to bring together Nurse researchers, biographers and other writers exploring the life and work of Florence Nightingale, the role of women and the development of nursing from 1850- 1910. The work presented at the conference was so impressive that the developers invited all the presenters to submit their presentations for publication. This is a compilation of some of those works.

The presenters offered a multidimensional view of the life and times of Ms. Nightingale and this book offers an even more intimate look into the private life of Ms. Nightingale – Flo-to her friends. Contrary to popular opinion, nursing was not her main effort in her post-Crimean life. The authors note that she was “not only a self-sacrificing heroine, but a manipulative, often erratic, and dedicated woman who spent a great deal of the last sixty years of her life in bed, from where she could control the people in her life”.

To my surprise, modern nursing was not developed with Ms. Nightingale’s direct input, but rather, influenced by her ideas and concepts which were carried on by those that came after her. Nightingale’s focus was on sanitation, the moral character of nurses and their education rather than training. (Emphasis mine). Although, she argued against “medical lectures’ as disruptive to their main purpose, to care and advocate for the patient. She felt an emphasis on physiology would make them “assistant Doctors”.

It is through her correspondences that we get this portrait of a woman staunchly independent, encouraged by her mentors and peers, and yet influenced by Victorian principles of submissiveness, domesticity, piety and purity, which, according to Janet Bryant and Kathleen Colling in their chapter, Broken wills and tender hearts: Religious ideology and the trained nurse in nineteenth century, remain with us today (p. 164).

I liked this book because of the alternative view and diverse opinion of the authors on the life of Ms. Nightingale who could be as sharp and caustic with her colleagues and benefactors as she could be with her underlings.

This book also gives us a look at the development of educational programs for women in the colleges and universities of America. I found the writings reflective of the histories we have been studying on the changing attitudes and methodologies of teaching in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century America.

5. Vincinus, Martha and Bea Nergaard, editors. “Ever Yours, Florence Nightingale: Selected Letters”. 1990. Harvard University Press. Cambridge, Mass.

This compilation of letters and correspondences gives another intimate look and author’s interpretation of the life of Florence Nightingale. It is not so much a compilation of essays of various authors (as many of the other references are) as it is a compilation of selected letters and correspondences with historical and editorial commentary illustrating various aspects or historical accounts of Ms. Nightingale’s life (and thoughts about her life). It is another view into her life and is somewhat repetitious. I will most likely use this reference to compare her writing to friends with writings to professionals or government officials. Some of the other resources have more extensive writing to her professional colleagues.

6. About.com http://www.about.com/ retrieved from the Internet 3.15.08. is a web site – directory that I retrieved from the internet when I googled Florence Nightingale. Among many topics, the website provides many pages and references to Florence Nightingale and other noteworthy women in nursing. The page I was interested in is on Women’s rights as seen through the eyes of Florence Nightingale. (http://womenshistory.about.com/od/nightingale/a/fn_womens_right.htm)

The page opens with a quote from one of her Ms Nightingale’s publications on Nursing: Notes on nursing, what it is and what it is not. (1888). I have requested this publication from the Lied Library as they do not have it in their publication list, it will come from another lending library. Another page that may be part of my final paper, http://womenshistory.about.com/cs/nightingale/a/nightingale_san.htm which is from the writings of the Western Sanitation Commission of 1874 on Ms Nightingales’ influence on the sanitation situation on America, at that time.

Generally this website provides access to various publications and articles on Florence Nightingale and links to other websites about her and her writings, as well as other writers on the same topics. I will use this website as a resource for references on nineteenth century female authors on scientific discourse. (as it applies to my topic) I have yet to fully explore the various links to publication of other contemporaries of Ms. Nightingale and will do so, if I find I need them for my paper. I am not very adept in navigating these types of websites and often get distracted from my original search.

7. Shuttelworth, Sally, Gowan Dawson, Richard Noakes; “Women, Science and Culture: Science in the Nineteenth-Century Periodical” Women: A Cultural Review 12.1 (2001). Website accessed: 22 Mar. 2008.

http://www.informaworld.com/10.1080/09574040110034129

This article is a discussion of the discoveries of women writers of the nineteenth century in “periodicals” and the development, in this journal, of an index to these periodicals. As the author points out “Women writers, like the majority of men, would usually have gained their understanding of evolution, or other major scientific issues, not from primary texts, but from discussions in periodicals”(p. 58). This was one of the ways that women could write about scientific topics and their understanding without recourse from the scientific community. In fact some of the male scientists [of the time] wrote about their findings in Periodicals before they submitted to their professional journals. This was alluded to in my second reference as one of the strategies that women found to write about their interests in Science. They could disguise their scientific knowledge in “fictional” stories or stories for children or popular domestic topics for women of the time. By not trying to publish in the scientific journals, they avoided the backlash of the male writers of those publications.

By examining the popular cartoon periodical “Punch”, an espoused misogynist and “wife-beater”, the author is surprised to find that some of the writings are supportive of women in the roles of Physicians and Nurses. Celebrating the works of Florence Nightingale and offering “backhanded’ compliments for the acquisition of medical degrees of Elizabeth Blackwell and Emily Davies; declaring that a physician for a wife is a “treasure indeed” since she would attend to her husband in sickness and save him the expenses of attendance by a physician on his
ignorant, hypochondriacal wife (p.60). This is the type of reference I was looking for to gain more insight to 19^th century writing and discourse. I will most likely use this resource to guide my analysis of the writings of Ms. Nightingale as they compare to other popular writers of that time.

8. Skinner, C. "The Purity of Truth: Nineteenth-Century American Women Physicians Write About Delicate Topics.” Rhetoric Review, 26(2), 103-119. (2007). 20 Mar, 2008.

Author Carolyn Skinner has discovered thirty-six advice texts and pamphlets written between 1847 and 1902, which she has reviewed to show that the women science writers used this means to communicate delicate topics and maintain “respectability” and femininity (p.102). By identifying with wives and mothers, these American Women Physicians maintained their femininity; also, by framing their advice for the health of the family, which as women, they were aught to do. By writing “advice texts”, rather than scientific texts, they connected with a much wider audience. By associating health with morality they could model ways in which to pass information on sex, sexuality and reproduction (delicate topics) to women and adolescents and not damage their reputations (p.117). Physicians- writers like Alice B. Stockham, Elizabeth Blackwell, Emma Drake and Mary Allen-Wood were able to reach a much wider audience than they would have if they presented their knowledge by giving lectures on a tour circuit and they would have incurred the wrath of the male physicians that saw this as their domain of teaching (103-04). According to Ms. Skinner, “The popularity of advice texts written by women physicians suggests that they constitute a significant body of rhetoric composed by women at this time, a body of texts with important implications for how we think of Nineteenth-century women rhetors and, by extension, of women writing science today (104).

I chose this article as an example of scientific discourse of American Women in medicine. By writing in this genre, women physicians had more influence on the discourse of scientific writing than they would have in addressing a professional audience. Their influence on women and families gave them the authority to advise and direct the health of the community and promote their own professionalism. This article provides an example of cross-cultural discourse in scientific writing to compare with the writings of Florence Nightingale and her European contemporaries.