Female Physicians in American Literature

<p><em>Female Physicians in American Literature</em> traces the woman physician character throughout her varying depictions in 19th-century literature from her appearance in sensational fiction as an evil abortionist to her more well-known idyllic feminine presence in novels of realism and regionalism. Murderess hag She-Devil the instrument of the very vilest crime known in the annals of hell—these are just a few descriptions of women abortionists in popular 19th-century sensational fiction. In novels of regionalism however she is often depicted as moral feminine and self-sacrificing. This dichotomy Jessee argues reveals two opposing literary approaches to registering the national fears of all that both women and abortion evoke: the terrifying threats to white masculine Anglo-American male supremacy. </p>