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Article: Doing it better than mother: Liane Aukin looks at the private life of Florence Nightingale, and at how her strained relationship with her mother shaped her destiny.
- Article from:
- History Today
- Article date:
- April 1, 2003
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2003 History Today Ltd. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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`For every one of my 18,000 children I have expended more motherly feeling and action in a week than my mother has expended on me in 37 years.'
THE NURSE HAS long been the butt of jokes and the object of sexual fantasies; the target of denigration as well as of idealisation. At one end of the spectrum she is Dominatrix, at the other--Angel. Current attitudes to nursing reveal the traces of old ambivalences about the function of nursing and the notions of femininity embodied in the figure of `nurse'. Many of the ambiguities inscribed in the modern image of `nurse' were enacted and deeply embodied in the life and psyche of the profession's founding figure, Florence ...