"But suppose we were to see a number of men in the morning sitting round a table in the drawing room, looking at prints, doing worsted work, and reading little books, how we should laugh!" (Nightingale 1034).
Nightingale writes more, talking about and asking if "a man's time [is] more valuable than a woman's". Nightingale then claims that women actually just have nothing concrete to do. But if we were to consider a passage in her "Subsidiary Notes", she does take a sufficient amount of time to uplift the occupation of nursing, and that tells her fellow women that clearly, they can pursue something with importance. Back in "Cassandra", later in the same passage, Nightingale takes on a voice, which suggests that she is really trying to convince her audience of the importance of women taking up occupation. She really does work with it in "Subsidiary Notes" about the significance of nursing from a woman. She dresses the idea of caring for others as a domestic profession and raises the relevance of female labor as a sanctuary from "the misery, and lessening the opportunities and temptations of gross sin...to promote the honest employment..." and she continues in a list of aims for nursing.
AS a female author, she definitely helps to advocate the idea of respectable occupation for women. She does mention, in a portion of "Cassandra", the role of religion, and she also draws religious conclusions in her "Subsidiary Notes". She wants to make it clear how separate Religious Orders and the Order she is trying to promote are. As a "Female Order" the nurses will not attempt to heal the soul, but heal the body, to which she seems to suggest that will cure the patients faster (Nightingale 2). And in "Cassandra", she states that to suffer for your race, you do not have to be a "Redeemer [or Jesus]" (Nightingale 1034). This leads into the desire, which suffering inflicts, to learn. And now we are again reminded of her appreciation for betterment and her claim, which proposes a better, progressive life for women in society.
So far, I have not come up with a solid idea on what my archival paper will be discussing, but I am very interested in the roles Nightingale presents to women and how this may disrupt society's views on feminism.
3 comments:
Hannah,
I think you bought up some really interesting points, especially in regards to Nightingale's views on the role of women in society. I am interested to know if Nightingale had other ambitions for women aside from entering the nursing/care industries- does she indicate, perhaps in other texts that women can accomplish all that their male counterparts have and ultimately lead a "male" life? I think this would be good to look into, as she appears to indicate that men could not perform the role in society which women currently undertake.
I agree with Charlotte, but to go even further I would wonder who exactly her audience here is. Clearly one obvious answer is women because she is trying to communicate all that nursing can be for a working woman, but I would also wonder if there are other people she is responding to. I ask this because her inclusion of separating women's agenda from religious agenda sounds like a justification; perhaps women have been attacked on trying to force religion on people, maybe even through nursing? That could be helpful to put her argument in a more contemporary context. Otherwise I think you have a lot to work with, Good Luck!
I am really glad that you chose to discuss "Cassandra". I had not read it yet, and it was very helpful to read what you got out of her text. In the texts that I have read, there were not as many clear arguments for equality. Do you think she wrote "Cassandra" in an attempt to argue for women's rights? Maybe she felt if she mixed nursing and equality in the same text, people would not take her notes on nursing as seriously. This brings up some questions as to why she separated her two arguments. Good luck on your research!
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