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Convalescence in the Nineteenth-Century Novel Hosanna Krienke (University of Wyoming)

Convalescence in the Nineteenth-Century Novel By Hosanna Krienke (University of Wyoming)

Convalescence in the Nineteenth-Century Novel by Hosanna Krienke (University of Wyoming)


Summary

This first scholarly overview of nineteenth-century convalescent care provides vital information for scholars of Victorian novels, history of medicine, and gender & disability studies. While scholars often discuss diseases individually, post-acute convalescent care benefited a wide range of ailments - such as consumption, overwork, and debility.

Convalescence in the Nineteenth-Century Novel Summary

Convalescence in the Nineteenth-Century Novel: The Afterlife of Victorian Illness by Hosanna Krienke (University of Wyoming)

Victorian Britain witnessed a resurgence of traditional convalescent caregiving. In the face of a hectic modern existence, nineteenth-century thinkers argued that all medical patients desperately required a lengthy, meandering period of recovery. Various reformers worked to extend the benefits of holistic recuperative care to seemingly unlikely groups: working-class hospital patients, insane asylum inmates, even low-ranking soldiers across the British Empire. Hosanna Krienke offers the first sustained scholarly assessment of nineteenth-century convalescent culture, revealing how interpersonal post-acute care was touted as a critical supplement to modern scientific medicine. As a method of caregiving intended to alleviate both physical and social ills, convalescence united patients of disparate social classes, disease categories, and degrees of impairment. Ultimately, this study demonstrates how novels from Bleak House to The Secret Garden draw on the unhurried timescale of convalescence as an ethical paradigm, training readers to value unfolding narratives apart from their ultimate resolutions.

Convalescence in the Nineteenth-Century Novel Reviews

'Krienke writes for academic readers, and will doubtless inspire literary scholars to try out her approach on other Victorian novels-many of which seem to call for it. Her valuable research will also be of interest to Victorianists in general, and especially those interested in gender, class, medical and colonial history.' Jacqueline Banerjee, Times Literary Supplement
' an exciting new vision of Victorian attitudes toward convalescence and healing. A valuable addition to the literature on Victorian culture. Highly recommended.' L. M. Purdy, Choice

About Hosanna Krienke (University of Wyoming)

Hosanna Krienke currently teaches at the University of Wyoming. She authored this text during her time as a post-doctoral researcher for the ERC-funded project 'Diseases of Modern Life: Nineteenth-Century Perspectives' at the University of Oxford. Her work has appeared in Victorian Review, Victorian Literature and Culture, and the medical humanities blog Nursing Clio.

Table of Contents

1. Convalescence and the Working-Class: Convalescent Homes, Illness Outcomes, and Charles Dickens's Bleak House; 2. Spiritual Convalescence: Reading Against the Deathbed in Convalescent Devotionals and Elizabeth Gaskell's Ruth; 3. Novel-Reading as Convalescence: Gender and Leisure in Wilkie Collins's The Moonstone; 4. Convalescence and Mental Illness: Recuperability in Insane Asylums, the After-Care Association, and Samuel Butler's Erewhon; 5. Imperial Convalescence: Frances Hodgson Burnett's The Secret Garden, Convalescent Depots, and the Birth of Rehabilitation Medicine.

Additional information

NPB9781108948913
9781108948913
110894891X
Convalescence in the Nineteenth-Century Novel: The Afterlife of Victorian Illness by Hosanna Krienke (University of Wyoming)
New
Paperback
Cambridge University Press
2023-06-22
244
N/A
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