Literature and Medicine I

16Being a “feminine” woman meant having virtues like altruism and self-denial. Being ambitious and wanting a career of her own was unseemly for a woman and “against her nature” – so seems to be the message from authors of fiction as well as “well-meaning” contemporary public opinion and the opinion of influential socio-biological “experts” (Weedon 3). It is interesting that women have to be told so often what their nature is – making it clear that being a “feminine” woman was (and is) more often a social than a natural phenomenon. This struggle to be or stay a “real” woman and simultaneously follow a profession or even a career was – in fiction – often combined with an absence of positive role models – the protagonists mostly having no other educated women around them for support.

Nonexistent Role Models

17Hilde and Annemarie are laughed at; Sina only meets with astonishment; Josephine with incomprehension; and Therese at first refusal, then criticism for being completely focused on her studies and not being “relaxed” enough to have other interests. They are attractive, at first sight, “feminine” women, and sooner or later all of them have troubles with men and desire. Unfortunately, being a “feminine” woman does cause conflicts, and there is no one to demonstrate how to handle this problem. For example, in Sina, the impolite and unpopular Eastern European student Fräulein Valevsky is no role model at all, being rude to male students out of self-protection (Spyri 89-94). The newly assigned female chief physician in Der Kampf einer Ärztin, Dr. Boisselière, is portrayed as being equally unattractive: she is called a “bone shaker” (“So’n alter Klapperkasten von Medizinerin […]” [Yver 300]) and described as an old maid and virago, a mannish woman. She, as other women, is classified in a deterministic fashion; she is “obviously meant to be an old maid by nature,” looking the way she does:

Fräulein Dr. Boisselière mochte mindestens ihre 45 Jahre hinter sich haben. Sie war ziemlich gross und knochig, sichtlich von Natur dazu bestimmt, alte Jungfer zu bleiben. Schlapphut, ein weisser Kragen mit schwarzem Selbstbinder, Herrenschnitt des Haars und ein Bartanflug über der Oberlippe unterstrichen noch den Eindruck des Mannweibs. Sie gehörte zur alten Garde der französischen Medizinerinnen, war erst Lehrerin gewesen und hatte sich ihr Studium sauer mit Stundengeben verdient. Ihre berühmten männlichen Kollegen begrüssten sie mit ausgesuchter Höflichkeit. (302)

Dr. Boisselière has become (or is) “a man” and is thus no role model at all for a feminine woman like Therese.

18The other older woman doctor, the beautiful and talented Dr. Lancelevée, transforms in Therese’s perception from being a role model and shining figure into a smug and cold-hearted person as soon as Therese herself has decided to give up her own career:

Alle Augen hatten sich unwillkürlich auf die beiden gerichtet. Theresens Blick überflog rasch die Runde und blieb an dem selbstgefälligen Gesicht der Lancelevée hängen, in dem der Stolz über den doppelten Erfolg geschrieben stand, den Erfolg als Frau und als Berufsmensch. “Es ist kein Geheimnis,” sagte Therese mit einem seltsamen Lächeln. “Ich habe mich entschlossen, meinen Beruf aufzugeben, Papa.” (303)

Dr. Lancelevée is a real threat, being successful as a physician and as a woman. She openly admits to having a lover, a famous professor, and is against marriage for women doctors – for good reasons, as Therese’s example confirms. Men are rather intolerant of wives with a profession outside their domestic duties. Since Dr. Lancelevée is attractive, she must be demonized through her personality, becoming a fallen angel, resistant to the man who wants to marry her and turn her into a “wife.” The change in Therese’s perception is not convincing in the course of the story, but makes sense in the context of a gender discussion of female medical students and women doctors: Dr. Lancelevée cannot be likeable any more because the concept of the self-determined woman putting her own needs before those of a man, being successful privately and as a physician, and being likeable at the same time, is not allowed—it cannot exist. Only women doctors who selflessly love someone are allowed to be attractive; hence Dr. Lancelevée’s unexpected shift into being self-satisfied and cold-hearted underneath her beautiful features: She makes the man who loves her suffer by turning down marriage.

Be an Exception or Be a “Man”—and Be Single

19Before Dr. Lancelevée fails as a role model, she is described as a woman who is out of the ordinary, without any other source of happiness aside from her specialization. She is a woman with a profession, not a woman with a private life (or a love life). That she could be happy apart from her professional success, being free, without a husband and a family, is simply not apprehended:

“Ich bin frei,” sagte sie, als sie Artout die Hand zum Abschied gab, “ich bin glücklich.” In der erleuchteten Eingangstür erschien die Zofe, eine bildhübsche Engländerin, mit Spitzenschürze; durch die Vorhänge sah man in das behagliche, von rosigem Lichtschein durchflutete Esszimmer. Dort setzt sie sich jetzt zu Tisch, dachte Artout, allein und schweigsam, aber nichts stört ihren Frieden. Auf jedes Glück hatte sie verzichtet ausser auf eines: eine aussergewöhnliche Frau zu sein. Und dieser Traum ist ganz in Erfüllung gegangen. (Yver 78)

Dr. Lancelevée’s acceptance as exceptional, not as a “normal” woman with a profession was also a way to make women understand that a higher medical education was not meant to be for them – only under extraordinary circumstances and only for exceptional women.

20Genia, the medical student and woman doctor in the novel Viele sind berufen (1933) by Hermann Hoster, is an exception as well, but in a different way than Dr. Lancelevée. Genia has traveled far, even killed a man, and she smells almost masculine, exotic, reminding one of leather, saddlery and horses, “ein beinahe männlicher Geruch” (87). But she is described merely as the main character’s assistant, as Famula to her future husband (as Annemarie and Daisy in the earlier novels) or as his fiancée (at the end), and even disappears for quite a great part of the story. Her “taming” is as unconvincing as the change in the way that Dr. Lancelevée is perceived. With the figure of Genia, the “exceptional” woman is combined with “masculinity”; the gender stereotypes cannot categorize her independent and wild behavior according to her sex. Other women doctors are also called “men,” even if they are or try to be “feminine,” as the following examples show.