Convalescence in the Nineteenth-Century Novel
The Afterlife of Victorian Illness
Part of Cambridge Studies in Nineteenth-Century Literature and Culture
- Author: Hosanna Krienke, University of Wyoming
- Date Published: June 2023
- availability: Not yet published - available from November 2024
- format: Paperback
- isbn: 9781108948913
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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.
Read more- Examines a broad historical model of recovery from sickness that was shared across various disease categories
- Revises established literary scholarship on invalidism, disability, and sickrooms to produce innovative close readings
- Relates historical understandings of recuperation to the present day
Reviews & endorsements
'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
See more reviews'… 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
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×Product details
- Date Published: June 2023
- format: Paperback
- isbn: 9781108948913
- length: 244 pages
- dimensions: 229 x 152 x 13 mm
- weight: 0.362kg
- availability: Not yet published - available from November 2024
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.
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