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THE “WRETCHED ITALIAN QUACK”: BRADDON’S CRITIQUE OF MEDICINE IN “GOOD LADY DUCAYNE”

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 May 2015

Sylvia A. Pamboukian
Sylvia A. Pamboukian*
Affiliation:
Robert Morris University
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Extract

A critical darling, Bram Stoker’s 1897 novel Dracula features several infamous blood transfusions. In that novel, Lucy Westenra receives blood transfusions from four different men, making her, according to Dr. Van Helsing, a polyandrist (158). In Stoker's novel, transfusion is not about medical verisimilitude so much as about romance or eroticism. Perhaps because of Dracula's status, Mary Elizabeth Braddon's 1896 story “Good Lady Ducayne” is often read as a vampire tale because it, too, includes blood transfusions. However, Braddon's engagement with contemporary medicine is very different than Stoker’s, since, unlike Dracula, Braddon's story engages with the experience of day-to-day medical treatment and is strongly invested in medical verisimilitude. Lauren M. E. Goodlad identifies the story's engagement with the medical profession largely through the character of Dr. Stafford, whom she views as a representative of the male-dominated, professional establishment. In Goodlad's reading, Lady Ducayne herself is a figure in both vampire literature and New Woman discourse as an “odd” woman, who becomes an “anti patriarchal figure of women's uncanny power to signify” (213). Goodlad's perceptive reading shows how the female vampire undermines conventional medicine, as embodied by Dr. Stafford. Yet, there is another physician in the story: Dr. Parravicini. If we take Dr. Parravicini as our starting point, we see that Braddon's critique of the medical profession is more wide-ranging and more radical than it previously appeared. What is Dr. Parravicini doing in this story? What is his relationship to Stafford and to the medical establishment? What does Braddon's realistic depiction of anesthesia and transfusion indicate about the medical profession and about the medicalization of modern culture?

Type
Research Article
Information
Victorian Literature and Culture , Volume 43 , Issue 3 , September 2015 , pp. 559 - 575
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Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2015 

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