Fear of Degeneration: Ennui and Florence Nightingale’s Vocational Turn
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This essay investigates Florence Nightingale’s navigation of her vocational turn during the journey on the Nile by examining her travel correspondence with her family, collected in Letters from Egypt: A Journey on the Nile 1849-1850. Nightingale’s travel to Egypt enabled her to avoid marriage and find a way to make her life more useful by not succumbing to women’s domestic duties. To accomplish her desire to pursue a medical profession, Nightingale’s travelogue employs a strategy: articulating the degenerative aspect of Egypt and its people, especially harem women, as a foil to highlight diligent white women contributing to the progress of England. This paper argues that Nightingale’s observations of the two types of women—harem women and Catholic nuns—reveal her abhorrence of ennui; the binary that she sees as a sign of moral deprivation from harem women and a sign of progress from white nuns’ acts as a narrative strategy that justifies her professional turn. Ultimately, this paper demonstrates that Nightingale’s fear becomes a catalyst for becoming a nurse, eventuating from her anxiety that grapples with being both leisured and busy during her journey.
Abstract
This essay investigates Florence Nightingale’s navigation of her vocational turn during the journey on the Nile by examining her travel correspondence with her family, collected in Letters from Egypt: A Journey on the Nile 1849-1850. Nightingale’s travel to Egypt enabled her to avoid marriage and find a way to make her life more useful by not succumbing to women’s domestic duties. To accomplish her desire to pursue a medical profession, Nightingale’s travelogue employs a strategy: articulating the degenerative aspect of Egypt and its people, especially harem women, as a foil to highlight diligent white women contributing to the progress of England. This paper argues that Nightingale’s observations of the two types of women—harem women and Catholic nuns—reveal her abhorrence of ennui; the binary that she sees as a sign of moral deprivation from harem women and a sign of progress from white nuns’ acts as a narrative strategy that justifies her professional turn. Ultimately, this paper demonstrates that Nightingale’s fear becomes a catalyst for becoming a nurse, eventuating from her anxiety that grapples with being both leisured and busy during her journey.
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