Under the Moon’s Healing Influence: George MacDonald’s Literary Re-envisioning of Women’s Health

Abstract

Listen

Translate article

Abstract This article demonstrates how the work of fantasist George MacDonald interacted with Victorian debates regarding women’s health. Participating in the trend to interpret MacDonald’s fiction as invested in contemporary societal issues, I bring to the forefront MacDonald’s interest in women’s rights and alternative medicine. Emphasizing MacDonald’s belief in the persuasive power of appealing indirectly to the imagination, I argue that MacDonald aimed to participate in women’s health reform through his short fiction. Focusing on works published between 1850 and 1880, I discuss MacDonald’s fairy tales in conjunction with his realist fiction in order to discern a pattern of literary tropes, such as the cursed princess, deployed to subvert dominant medical views of women’s bodies. I consider how MacDonald represents elements of Victorian medicine, such as the clinical objectification of patients, the medicalization of disability, and the early social eugenics movement. In his countercultural representation of impaired female characters as empowered heroines, I argue that MacDonald challenges the medical stigmatization of women’s bodies. This article also considers how MacDonald challenges the interventionism of Victorian allopathy by celebrating the practices of established alternative approaches, such as homeopathy and hydropathy. As an early proponent of bibliotherapy, MacDonald demonstrates his belief in the healing potential of narrative both within the context of his narratives and in his use of narrative to improve women’s health practices.