Nursing the image

by Julia Hallam

"This book argues that nursing's professional identity in post-war Britain is a discourse of white femininity that women actively construct and practise in conditions and circumstances not of their choosing. Images of nursing in the media and promotional recruitment literature are juxtaposed with written and oral accounts of becoming a nurse gathered from a diverse group of women. These auto/biographies reveal how a Victorian legacy of white middle-class values, inherited from Florence Nightingale's pioneering efforts to make nursing a respectable profession for women, permeated nursing's professional identity and shaped nurses' attitudes to their working lives. For those deemed 'unsuitable' for training because of their gender, class or skin colour, many of whom arrived in England from Britain's former colonies to staff the newly created National Health Service, the 'angel' embodied an outdated system of values and practices that had to be challenged." "Nursing the Image will be a val