“Like iron and whisky": Nursing and Marriage in Fin de Siècle English Canadian Fiction

This article explores the central conflicts surrounding Canadian nursing and how this profession was depicted in the fiction of the period. It considers the extent to which Canadian configurations of the New Woman were both activated and muted by this era's often contradictory maternal-feminist rhetoric, discussing the constraints it placed upon authors and the destinies they could provide for their heroines. Focusing on the representation of nursing in Jessie Kerr Lawson's Dr Bruno's Wife (1893) and Grant Allen's Hilda Wade (1899), this article interrogates whether these fictional nurses maintained a rhetoric of female subjection and submissiveness or whether the novel instead acted as a site of agency and subversion for nurses and, perhaps, for the figure of the New Woman more broadly.