Negotiating Their Medical Authority

The Life Writings of Frances Burney, Hester Thrale, and Anne Lister

Abstract

Analyzing the life writings and libraries of three turn-of-the-century British women - Frances Burney d’Arblay, Hester Lynch Thrale Piozzi, and Anne Lister - this study examines how women used medical language as a tool for establishing authority in their everyday lives. All three of these women had extensive access to scientific medical knowledge. Through conversations with medical men, evaluations of literature as well as their experiences treating members of their community, each cultivated a deep awareness of the human body, its diseases and cures. Their diaries and letters reveal that the divide between domestic and scientific medicine was by no means clear cut, and that class – more than gender – determined one’s access to this knowledge. However, the way that these women refused to write openly about female anatomy and health in particular exhibits that there were certain aspects of the medical field deemed inappropriate for the woman of high society to know and discuss. Ultimately, this article demonstrates how scientific medicine was seen as an expression of masculine authority and how women could learn it but not necessarily always express it publicly. It opens questions for further study on the absence of women writing about their knowledge of anatomy as a purposeful lacuna that allowed women to circumnavigate the constraints of their time.