Florence Nightingale, Feminist

Abstract

Florence Nightingale, Feminist By Judith Lissauer Cromwell (Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Co, Inc., 2013) (320 pages, $40.00 paper)This new biography treads the familiar ground of Nightingale's life but views it in its entirety through a new lens-that of feminism. Clearly, her conclusions are in the title; she views Nightingale as a feminist. The story of Nightingale's life is nicely written and complete. Although no dramatically new information is revealed in the narrative, it is very nicely presented with black-and-white original drawings and sketches placed strategically throughout the text, giving it an elegant look, as does the font and typesetting. Cromwell relied on the muchused biographies of Nightingale (Sir Edward Cook, Ida Beatrice O'Malley, Cecil Woodham-Smith, and Martha Vinicus) as well as the recently published Collected Works of Florence Nightingale , edited by Lynn McDonald. However, she also spent time researching primary source data on her own in Great Britain as well as visiting the Florence Nightingale Museum, the manuscript reading room of the British Library and the Wellcome Library, the National Portrait Gallery and the Photographic Survey, and the Courtauld Institute of Art, in London. She visited Columbia University archives and the New York Public Library in New York City as well as the Costume Institute of New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art. In addition, she used two physicians for insight and consultation into well-documented health conditions of Nightingale.Beginning with a chapter entitled "The Child is the Mother of the Woman," Cromwell situates Nightingale as a woman who needed to get away from the script her mother Fanny envisioned for her life. She situates Nightingale, born in 1820, in her well-heeled lifestyle: three homes-one at Embley Park near London, one in London, and one in Lea Hurst in Derbyshire- European travel-and a large extended family-in refreshing prose. The chapter ends with the well-known, first "call to work" received by Florence on February 7, 1837, she thinks is from God. The family "battles" are detailed over the curse of the next chapters, all centered on Florence's need to be useful, to "nurse," to not marry, and most of all, to not conform to the life her mother envisioned for her. In a chapter entitled "The Penultimate Battle," Florence turned down a proposal of marriage to her family's great distress. And the next chapter, "The Prison Called Family" (these were words penned by Florence herself ), documents Florence's struggle to break free of the confines of family and to travel to Kaiserswerth, Germany, for nurses' "training." Although she succeeded in doing this, the toll on all involved in this family drama was severe.She returned home, however, more determined than ever. She would become "a matron at a large public hospital" (p. 88). Her next move was to London, where she took over the Institution for the Care of Sick Gentlewomen in Distressed Circumstances on Harley Street in London. She was 33 years of age. It would be another year before her true "destiny" beckoned, and she leftto nurse the entire British Army in the Crimea in 1855. The next chapters of her external life are well-known; Cromwell, however, manages to relay this often told tale in vivid prose while keeping intact-and in her own words-the "scripts" running through Florence's head, keeping the tonality intact. …