Mrs Seacole Prescribes Hybridity: Climate and the Victorian Mixed-race Subject
Mrs Seacole Prescribes Hybridity: Climate and the Victorian Mixed-race Subject
This chapter examines the Wonderful Adventures of Mrs Seacole in Many Lands (1857). A Jamaican doctress and hotelier, Seacole implies that her mixed race lends her a stronger constitution than her white patients and readers. In this sense, racialised narratives of illness form the foundation for her autobiographical authority. As support, this chapter outlines relevant theories of racial hybridity and health from the mid nineteenth-century. It also draws upon theories of women’s autobiography and gender and empire to show that Seacole consistently blends medical and maternal discourses when she describes nursing white British men abroad. It concludes that Seacole’s widespread acceptance during her own time should cause us to reconsider the role of mixed-race subjects in Victorian British culture.
Keywords: war nursing, hybridity, women’s autobiography, Caribbean, Mary Seacole, indigenous remedies
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