Literature and Medicine I

11Whereas in Studierte Mädel, Ury (being “braver” than fifteen years later) at least included a short scene about a practical lesson in anatomy in which the protagonist Hilde, the daughter of an oculist, is more accomplished than Daisy, there is hardly a word in Sina and Nesthäkchen about the medical studies the young women are supposed to be pursuing. Sina and Annemarie both attend botany lectures – which involve nothing of the human body. Instead, Annemarie’s travel adventures and outings with other students, as well as her inexperience in housekeeping, receive long descriptions. Sina, for her part, is constantly tortured by guilt about her beloved grandmother’s death: not being by her side, leaving her for her studies, and not supporting and sharing her grandmother’s works of charity for the ill and poor. Sina is deeply shaken by Professor Clementi’s disapproval of female medical students and leaves the university for a position as a language teacher – being obviously qualified for this work despite not having studied languages (working as a teacher being an accepted profession for women that needed no further explanation).

12The affront presented by an educated woman is only doubled by the prospect of a female physician. Surprisingly, discussions about “decency” and the shocking prospect of a woman learning about anatomy did not apply to women who trained as nurses. The reason for this double moral standard is surely the threatening status of power which women doctors can achieve; a nurse, however well-trained she may be and regardless if she is more experienced than a medical doctor, is always relegated to a lower level in both the hospital and medical hierarchy as well as in social perception – not to mention pecuniary circumstances. Professor Clementi’s statement that women prefer to be nurses also expresses the then common opinion that “real” women were not professionally ambitious and, equally, did not care about a good salary. Their success was not supposed to pay off in terms of money or in higher professional and social prestige, i.e., in power.

Success

13Even if the debate about whether women were intelligent and mentally strong enough to study slowly ebbed away (although enemies of higher education for women were still discussing the subject at the beginning of the twentieth century), it is highly unlikely that a woman around 1900 would be allowed to be more successful than a man – be it her fiancé, her husband, her son, or even some other competitor in the “trade.” For instance, Therese, a successful and admired woman doctor and scientist in Colette Yver’s Der Kampf einer Ärztin (1901/1938), will be slowly demoralized once her husband, a general practitioner, decides to compete with her:

Ferdinand, der die ganze Zeit über stumm zugehört hatte, stand auf und trat ans Fenster, als wollte er Luft schnappen. Ein Gedanken, der ihm gekommen war, als seine Frau so eifrig mit den Professoren diskutierte, liess ihm keine Ruhe. Er hatte sich gefragt: ‘Und wie schätzt sie dich wohl innerlich ein, wo sie sich mit ihren vierundzwanzig Jahren ohne weiteres neben alle diese berühmten Leute stellt? Dich, den armseligen praktischen Arzt?’ [...] Zum ersten mal erwachte in seinem frischen unverbrauchten Kopf der Ehrgeiz. Er wollte nicht länger der unbedeutende Allerweltsarzt neben einem Boussard bleiben und für ihn, Herlinge und all die andern nur der Mann der vielbewunderten Ärztin sein. [...] er musste bekannt werden, koste es, was es wolle. (150-51)

“Whatever the cost” – even if it be his wife’s happiness. And yes, Ferdinand’s new scientific project proceeds well, while Therese’s scientific career enters a decline because of her newborn child and her struggle with Ferdinand’s demands on her position as a wife. In the end, Therese even gives up her career as a general practitioner because of her husband’s insuperable wish for a traditional wife (whose model he finds in an acquaintance, spending more and more evenings outside his own home), and agrees to be his assistant, thus supporting his scientific project.

14Marie in Lisa Wenger’s Die Wunderdoktorin is also a much more successful doctor than her male counterpart, i.e., her son, yet she resigns out of love for him. Marie lives in a region of Switzerland where she has the legal right to practice medicine without a degree. She develops her talent as physician by way of private studies and experience. Nevertheless, she gives up her successful surgery for her educated son who despises her practice (which paid for his education) and competes with her though he is not able to succeed alongside her.

15In Arbeit, Ilse Frapun-Akunian’s protagonist Josephine becomes the main provider of the family after her husband is convicted of a crime; upon graduating from medical school and working in the surgery that belonged to her husband, she is severely verbally abused by him when he returns from jail and sees her success. The socio-biological argument of nature in connection with a woman’s behavior and professional position is clearly expressed in Josephine’s husband’s frustration when he calls her – a woman – inferior, subordinate, and a slave by nature who is not supposed to be strong or to rise above a man, no matter the circumstances (223). The fact that she beats him at his own profession, medicine, it is the crowning frustration.