Florence Nightingale and Her Affect

Florence Nightingale and Her Affect on Modern Day Nursing

Florence Nightingale has been remembered by Western posterity in a variety of ways. From the chaste Lady with a Lamp to the partaker of lesbian romps with Queen Victoria, the famed progenitor of professional nursing for women is viewed in a spectrum that runs from the idealistically romantic to the vulgarly absurd. Famously remembered for serving as the basis for Florence Nightingale Syndrome (when a female nurse falls in love with a patient -- and somewhat of a misnomer, as Nightingale herself never appeared to fall in love with anyone), Nightingale, ironically, had more in common with the nuns of the medieval age than the ladies of romantic fiction. Nonetheless, the legend of Florence Nightingale has been recounted in various works from poetry to stage to film and television. This paper will recount the life of Nightingale and analyze her effect on modern day nursing. It will also show how the history of England, her own religious fervor, and her family's own economic situation inspired her to do what she considered to be a "calling from God," and how that vocation created a new myth of womanhood and a new arena, in which artists of the 20th century could explore the repercussions of Nightingale's influence.

Outline

I. Foundations and Inspirations

A. The Division between Church and State and the Loss of Religious Vocations

B. The Influence of family life and the Unitarian religion

C. Florence Nightingale's Inspired Decision

II. The Crimean War

A. Friendship with Sidney Herbert, Secretary at War

B. Nightingale's Nurses

C. The Decline in Death Rate

III. Nightingale's Literary Works

A. Notes on Nursing

B. Numerous Essays, including Cassandra

C. Suggestions for Thought, Mysticism, and a Spiritual Journey

IV. Nightingale's Statistical Analysis and Crusade for Sanitation Reform

A. Member of the Royal Statistical Society (1859)

B. Sanitary Reform in India -- Decline of Mortality Rates (1873)

V. Art and Nightingale's Influence on Modern Day Nursing

A. The Lady with the Lamp

B. Early Morning

C. Eugene O'Neill's Strange Interlude

D. Dashiell Hammett

E. Women in War Time and the Hard-Boiled Male

F. Nursing Today

VI. Conclusion

A. The Call to Vocation

B. The Influences: Before and After

C. Nursing, Feminism, Service, and the Male Ego