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RESEARCH PRODUCT

Florence Nightingale as a Victorian career woman

subject

public and private spherenursingVictorian womanCrimean WarFlorence Nightingale

description

The chapter focuses on the role of Florence Nightingale (1820-1910) in turning nursing into a trained profession and a viable and respectable career option for Victorian women seeking employment outside of the home. Nightingale's accomplishments and her thoughts on women's lot in life as expressed in her essay "Cassandra", are presented against the backdrop of the ideology of separate spheres which circumscribes women within the domestic domain. The chapter discusses Nightingale's work in British military field hospitals during the Crimean War, her successful efforts to reform the ways in which such hospitals were run, and the establishment of the Nightingale School and Home for Nurses and the Training School for Midwives.