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This book is a study of depictions of health and sickness in the early American novel, 1787-1808. These texts reveal a troubling tension between the impulse toward social affection that built cohesion in the nation and the pursuit of self-interest that was considered central to the emerging liberalism of the new Republic. Good health is depicted as an extremely positive social value, almost an a priori condition of membership in the community. Characters who have the "glow of health" tend to enjoy wealth and prestige; those who become sick are burdened by poverty and debt or have made bad decisions that have jeopardized their status. Bodies that waste away, faint, or literally disappear off of the pages of America's first fiction are resisting the conditions that ail them; as they plead for their right to exist, they draw attention to the injustice, apathy, and greed that afflict them.
List of contents
Preface.- Acknowledgments.- Introduction.- 1. A "Very Unfeeling World": The Failure of Social Healing in Rowson's America.- 2. "Your Health and My Happiness": Sickness and Health in The Coquette and Female Quixotism.- 3. "The Best Means of Retaining Health": Self-determined Health and Social Discipline in Early America.- 4. "The Means of Subsistence": Health, Wealth, and Social Affection in a Yellow Fever World.- 5. The "Learned Doctor": Tyler's Literary Endorsement of a Federalist Elite.- 6. "Some Yankee Non-sense about Humanity": Hiding Away African Health in Early American Fiction.- Epilogue.- Notes.- Bibliography.- Index.-
About the author
Maureen Tuthill is Associate Professor of English and A.P. Green Endowed Fellow in English at Westminster College, Fulton, Missouri, USA. Her articles and reviews have appeared in
Legacy: A Journal of American Women Writers,
Literature of the Early American Republic, and
Early American Literature.
Summary
This book is a study of depictions of health and sickness in the early American novel, 1787-1808. These texts reveal a troubling tension between the impulse toward social affection that built cohesion in the nation and the pursuit of self-interest that was considered central to the emerging liberalism of the new Republic. Good health is depicted as an extremely positive social value, almost an a priori condition of membership in the community. Characters who have the “glow of health” tend to enjoy wealth and prestige; those who become sick are burdened by poverty and debt or have made bad decisions that have jeopardized their status. Bodies that waste away, faint, or literally disappear off of the pages of America’s first fiction are resisting the conditions that ail them; as they plead for their right to exist, they draw attention to the injustice, apathy, and greed that afflict them.
Additional text
“Maureen Tuthill’s fascinating book demonstrates how American assumptions about healthcare have their roots in the eighteenth century and, in particular, the two decades following the USA’s founding. … Health and Sickness in the Early American Novel is deeply researched, tightly structured and consistently well argued. … The book makes thought-provoking and sobering reading … .” (Rowland Hughes, The British Society for Literature and Science, bsls.ac.uk, November, 2017)
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"Maureen Tuthill's fascinating book demonstrates how American assumptions about healthcare have their roots in the eighteenth century and, in particular, the two decades following the USA's founding. ... Health and Sickness in the Early American Novel is deeply researched, tightly structured and consistently well argued. ... The book makes thought-provoking and sobering reading ... ." (Rowland Hughes, The British Society for Literature and Science, bsls.ac.uk, November, 2017)
