No Profession For A Lady
I am often asked if Samantha Hargrave, the heroine of my novel Domina, was based on an actual historical figure. She was.
During the years I worked as an operating room nurse, I developed a keen interest in women in medicine, and particularly women doctors in history. There was a time when women were barred from the health professions in the belief that they hadn't the mental capacity for the job, and also that it wasn't ladylike. This is the theme I explore in Domina, and in doing research, I read the biographies of several pioneering women doctors of the 19th century - a time when city streets teemed with disease, labor pains were considered a punishment for sin, lethal drugs were sold without prescriptions, and many men would stop at nothing to keep a woman from becoming a doctor - even to physically throwing a female medical student from the classroom!
When colleges fell under the pressure of school benefactors and women's rights activists to enroll women, the male medical students, resentful of having females in their midst, would play cruel jokes on them and chant insulting verses, such as this one from 1879:
"Venus found herself a goddess
In a world controlled by gods.
So she opened up her bodice,
And evened up the odds."
What those early women doctors went through to enter the profession is astounding, and their courage nothing less than amazing. So when I am asked who was the model for my heroine, Samantha Hargrave, I point to several pioneering ladies, but most particularly to Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell (1821-1910), the first woman to obtain a medical degree in the United States (1849). And when no hospital would give her a post, she opened her own, the New York Infirmary for Women and Children.
If Domina piques your interest in women in medicine, and the tremendous odds they overcame to achieve their dream, I recommend any of the fine biographies of Blackwell that are available today.
Image Source: www.senate.state.ny.us
