The Double Feminine Nature and the Medical Gaze: Elsie Venner (1861)

Abstract

Elsie Venner: A Romance of Destiny, written in 1861 by Oliver Wendell Holmes, is a singular novel. Written at a time when medicine was struggling to become a model of professionalization, its singularity lies in the fact that there are four doctors involved in the novel: its author, the narrator of the story and two main characters. Apart from this, out of the three main female characters in the novel, two of them sicken as a consequence of their disobedience to social and moral standards. The novel helps us explore some of the most important issues that were at the center of public debate in nineteenth century medicine: the supposedly pathological nature of female health, the complex relationship between doctor and patient, the consequences of crossing the borders of gender roles, the medical treatment of hysteria, the observational skills of the doctor, the role of the nurse and the threats to healthy reproduction.

Full text

Revista de Estudios Norteamericanos 20 (2016), Seville, Spain. ISSN 1133-309-X. pp.109-136
THE DOUBLE FEMININE NATURE AND
THE MEDICAL GAZE:
ELSIE VENNER (1861)
CRISTINA RODRÍGUEZ PASTOR
Universidad de Cádiz
cristina.rodriguez@uca.es
Received 22nd April 2016
Accepted 2nd November 2016
KEYWORDS
Medical gaze; affective hermeneutics; female health; nurse;
professionalization.
PALABRAS CLAVE
Mirada clínica; hermenéutica afectiva; salud femenina; enfermera;
profesionalización.
ABSTRACT
Elsie Venner: A Romance of Destiny, written in 1861 by Oliver
Wendell Holmes, is a singular novel. Written at a time when
medicine was struggling to become a model of professionalization, its
singularity lies in the fact that there are four doctors involved in the
novel: its author, the narrator of the story and two main characters.
Apart from this, out of the three main female characters in the novel,
two of them sicken as a consequence of their disobedience to social
and moral standards.
The novel helps us explore some of the most important issues that
were at the center of public debate in nineteenth century medicine:
the supposedly pathological nature of female health, the complex
relationship between doctor and patient, the consequences of
crossing the borders of gender roles, the medical treatment of
hysteria, the observational skills of the doctor, the role of the nurse
and the threats to healthy reproduction.
RESUMEN
Elsie Venner: A Romance of Destiny, escrita en 1861 por Oliver
Wendell Holmes, es una novela singular. Escrita en una época en
que la medicina luchaba por convertirse en un modelo de
profesionalización, su singularidad recae en el hecho de que hay
cuatro médicos implicados en la novela: su autor, el narrador de la
historia y dos personajes principales. Aparte de esto, de los tres
personajes femeninos principales en la novela, dos de ellos enferman

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como consecuencia de su desobediencia a los estándares morales y
sociales.
La novela nos ayuda a explorar algunas de las cuestiones más
importantes que se situaban en el centro del debate público en la
medicina del siglo XIX: la supuesta naturaleza patológica de la salud
femenina, la compleja relación entre el médico y su paciente, las
consecuencias de cruzar las fronteras de los roles de género, el
tratamiento médico de la histeria, las destrezas observacionales del
médico, el papel de la enfermera y las amenazas a la salud de la
reproducción.
INTRODUCTION
During the second half of the nineteenth century, medicine
was in the process of becoming a professional discipline. The
standardization of its studies and the regulation of its practice
through the creation of the American Medical Association in 1847
responded to the necessity of reinforcing its authority. The
consolidation of the prestige of the profession received the support of
the middle class who, in turn, was interested in how medicine
disseminated theories about the intrinsic pathology of female nature.
These theories tried to demonstrate that women‟s health depended
on their reproductive functions. The uterus was considered the
central organ of the female body. They insisted on the difficult
balance of the uterine economy: any alteration of this organ and its
functions produced by emotional or physical causes could lead to all
kinds of disorders in women‟s health. In 1847, Frederick Hollick, a
famous American physician, referred to the uterus as: “the most
excitable of all, and so intimately connected, by the ramifications of
its numerous nerves, with every other part” (205).
1
The well-being of
women and thus, of the reproduction of the race, was threatened not
only by their natural tendency to emotions but also by their attempts
to leave the domestic sphere. If women tried to canalize their energies
towards activities other than those proper of their sex, the collapse of
their health was inevitable. The doctor then became an indispensable
figure in women‟s lives.
2
A whole apparatus of vigilance was activated
1
Among the countless examples of contemporary advocates of this idea on both sides
of the ocean we can find prominent figures such as Thomas Laycock, Pye Henry
Chavasse, Edward H. Dixon or John Conolly.
2
Many historians—such as Barbara Ehrenreich and Deirdre English, Elaine
Showalter, Sally Shuttleworth and Caroll Smith-Rosenberg, to name just a few—have

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to control a body, as Foucault puts it, “thoroughly saturated with
sexuality” (History 104).
If emotions constituted a complication in women‟s health, the
ability to detect them as symptoms of illness became a skill doctors
needed to acquire as a decisive step towards their
professionalization. The capacity to read emotions in the body of the
other has been, according to contemporary naturalist sociologists
like Herbert Spencer, part of the female DNA since primitive times, a
survival skill (342-343). Athena Vrettos refers to this ability as
“affective hermeneutics” (29). Whereas it was natural in women,
doctors needed to develop it, learn how to use it.
3
This study attempts to analyze anxieties about female
sexuality in nineteenth century medicine and its relationship with
the professionalization of medicine. Choosing a novel that was
written by a prominent American physician has provided me with
illuminating insight into Victorian attitudes towards the health of
women. Another objective is to grasp the specular nature of Victorian
medical practices. To do this, close attention will be paid to the figure
of the doctor in his relationship with his patient, the scope of his
medical gaze and its connection with the female ability for affective
hermeneutics.
Finally, this essay also examines Holmes‟s novel in the light of
late-Victorian worries about the health of reproduction and the
collapse of civilization. Widespread beliefs in the importance of race
for the progress of the nation translated into an effort of
anthropology for mapping racial differences and defending the
superiority of the white race. According to these biological theories
based on erroneous interpretations of the evolutionary theory, non-
analyzed the impact of these theories on the lives of women and the role they played in
the construction of the ideal of femininity.
3
This interest in interpreting corporeal signs had its origin in the tremendous
influence of pseudosciences like physiognomy and phrenology. Developed by the Swiss
philosopher Johann Caspar Lavater in the eighteenth century, physiognomy analyzed
people‟s faces, especially their forehead and eyes, searching for signs that might reveal
valuable information about their “moral life” (Lavater 8). Physiognomy was in turn the
precursor of the equally influential phrenology, which was founded by the German
physician Franz Gall. According to Gall, the character of a person was determined by
the shape of their head. Assigning moral and intellectual faculties to every part of the
brain, phrenologists believed that the prevalence of a certain faculty in a person‟s
character depended on the size of its corresponding area in the brain. This way, they
carefully examined the bumps in one‟s head in order to determine which faculties were
more developed.

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white races had gone back in the evolutionary scale remaining in a
primitive state (Otis 561). The fear of “reverse colonization,”
4
that is,
concerns that the colonized might turn the wheels of colonization,
underlies much of the Darwinian rhetoric of late nineteenth-century
fiction. But this aversion to difference or to “the Other” did not only
apply to race, but to all those individuals who fell outside hegemonic
groups in terms of religion, social class and nationality. This way,
concerns about the mixture of blood and contact with the Other as
causes of degeneration are revealed in a story in which the main
character, at the onset of her reproductive life, threatens to poison
society.
Michel Foucault‟s theoretical framework, with his notions of
power and knowledge, will constitute the basis of my approach.
However, in order to overcome Foucault‟s shortcomings in terms of
gender, I will extend it from a feminist perspective. This will allow me
to trace the role of medicine in the construction of the feminine ideal.
Equally key in my research is to examine the extent to which
characters fit in their gender roles and the consequences of their
deviance from socially and medically sanctioned paths.
Elsie Venner: A Romance of Destiny (1861)
5
was the first novel
published by Oliver Wendell Holmes, a prestigious doctor from New
England. Young Bernard Langdon, a promising medical student who
belongs to the Brahmin
6
caste is compelled to interrupt his studies
and look for a job in order to help his family. Thus, Bernard accepts
a teaching position at a girls‟ school in Rockland, Massachusetts. His
4
Term proposed by Arata in his study about imperial Gothic fiction (623).
5
Elsie Venner was initially serialized as “The Professor‟s Story” in the Atlantic Monthly
between January of 1860 and April of 1861. Careful not to present the story as just an
entertainment, he referred to it from the beginning as a “medicated novel” (1), stating
that: “Through all the disguise of fiction a grave scientific doctrine may be detected
lying beneath some of the delineations of character” (2). The story, although very
popular at the time, was condemned by the religious world for his criticism to the
stern dogmas of Calvinist religion (Weinstein 90).
6
It was Holmes himself who first used the term “Brahmin” in the Atlantic Monthly in
1860 to refer to the oldest and most influential families of Massachusetts, most of
them direct descendants of the first settlers aboard the Mayflower. As a member of
this caste, Bernard is an example of its physical and intellectual qualities: “There are
races of scholars among us, in which aptitude for learning […] are congenital and
hereditary” (8). Holmes regarded himself as a member of this elite.

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story is told by another doctor, his anatomy professor, who also
becomes his advisor.
7
At the school, Bernard meets his colleague, Miss Helen
Darley, and his attention is instantly drawn to “the fair, open
forehead, the still, tranquil eye of gentle, habitual authority, the
sweet gravity that lay upon the lips” (48). The connection between
them is immediate, due to their shared ability for physiognomy and
affective hermeneutics. A simple glance suffices her to recognize a
gentleman in him: “as she read his expression and his features with
a woman‟s rapid, but exhausting glance” (52), whereas at the same
time Bernard recognizes her ability: “as he met her questioning
look,—so brief, so quiet, yet so assured, as of one whom necessity
had taught to read faces quickly without offence […] as wives read
the faces of hard-souled husbands […]” (52-53). Helen‟s ability to
read and interpret body language is described as a “necessity,”
intrinsic to her female nature and vital for her survival. In Bernard‟s
case it is learned, the result of his training as a physician.
Soon he notices something hidden under Helen‟s apparent
calm appearance. Her beauty seems lifeless due to exhaustion after
long working hours:
She was […] overworked, and an overworked woman is always a sad
sight,—sadder a great deal than an overworked man, because she is
so much more fertile in capacities of suffering than a man. She has
so many varieties of headaches […] and then her neuralgias, and her
backaches, and her fits of depression, in which she thinks she is
7
Like the narrator of his novel, Holmes was an anatomy and physiognomy professor.
His study on the causes of puerperal fever in 1843 was especially relevant in the
treatment of this illness (Otis 177). He exercised his profession in Boston between
1836 and 1846, was dean of the Harvard Medical School, mentor of the famous
neurologist Silas Weir Mitchell and founding member of the American Medical
Association. For these reasons, he was truly representative of the professionalization
of medicine in America. At the start of his medical career he gained recognition as a
poet after the publication of his Poems in 1836. His two other novels were The
Guardian Angel (1867) and A Mortal Antipathy (1885). However, the literary works that
earned him immediate international recognition were his famous series of written
conversations with imaginary interlocutors at a boardinghouse table: The Autocrat of
the Breakfast-table (1857), The Professor at the Breakfast-table (1859), The Poet at the
Breakfast-table (1872) and Over the Teacups (1891). Closely related to some of the
main figures of the American Renaissance and one of the leading representatives of
the “Conversational age” in fiction, his own public image as a brilliant talker was a
reflection of this style, influencing in many areas of social and intellectual life (Gibian
49-50).

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nothing and less than nothing, and those paroxysms which men
speak slightingly of as hysterical […] so many trials which belong to
her fine and mobile structure,—that she is always entitled to pity,
when she is placed in conditions which develop her nervous
tendencies. (49)
For the narrator, the consequences of nervous exhaustion
are more severe in women, due to their pathological nature. Holmes
uses Helen‟s character and the rhetoric of Darwinism
8
to warn about
the social implications of female incorporation into the public sphere.
An example of sacrifice and dedication— “a martyr by the slow social
combustive process” (85), Helen‟s physical and mental debilitation
reduces her reproductive possibilities; her energy is wasted through
the wrong channels provoking the collapse of her uterine economy
and the alteration of natural laws.
Bernard discovers that Helen is being the object of ruthless
exploitation from the director of the school. When he confronts him
we can perceive his considerable effort to control his emotions: “to
keep [words] from boiling into fierce articulation” (87). In a letter to a
friend he confesses: “I am the sort of man that locks his door
sometimes and cries his heart out of his eyes,—that can sob like a
woman and not be ashamed of it […]” (151). This admitted sensibility
contributes to the improvement of his ability for affective
hermeneutics as a result of his medical training:
[D]o you know the pathos there is in the eyes of unsought women,
oppressed with the burden of an inner life unshared? I can see into
them now as I could not in those earlier days. I sometimes think
their pupils dilate on purpose to let my consciousness glide through
them; indeed, I dread them, I come so close to the nerve of the soul
itself in these momentary intimacies. (151)
Therefore, Bernard recognizes his struggle to avoid sympathy
when dealing with women in the same situation as Helen‟s. The fear
that the dissection of the patient‟s soul might affect his own nervous
system is revealed during the training of the medical gaze. This way,
in this delicate specular dynamics, doctors must look for signs of
emotions in their patient‟s body while they prevent these emotions
being transferred to them. As Foucault suggests:
8
Darwin‟s The Origin of the Species was published only two years earlier and its
influence is evident throughout the novel.

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Doctor and patient are caught up in an ever-greater proximity,
bound together, the doctor by an ever-more attentive, more insistent,
more penetrating gaze, the patient by all the silent, irreplaceable
qualities that, in him, betray--that is, reveal and conceal--the closely
ordered forms of the disease. (Birth 15-16)
In order to grant objectivity in this “proximity,” and avoid
contamination, doctors were strongly advised to pursue an emotional
detachment in their interaction with the patient, something that
required a great effort of will. Not in vain, this is the recommendation
another doctor offers Bernard later on in the novel: “Keep your eyes
open and your heart shut” (141). Similarly at play were concerns
about the loss of authority in their relationship with the patient,
resulting in a potential feminization of their practice.
9
When Bernard meets his pupils, one of them immediately
draws his attention: “who and what is that […] sitting a little apart
there,—that strange, wild-looking girl?” (38). Elsie Venner‟s
impression on the young teacher is described as the result of the
combination of several elements. First, her breathtaking beauty: her
shiny long black hair, her dark complexion, her slender neck
adorned with all kinds of jewelry; her sinuous movement; her almost
imperceptible step; but the most remarkable aspect of her
appearance is her black eyes and penetrating look. In contrast to
Helen‟s angelical appearance— “[h]er plainly parted brown hair, her
meek, blue eyes, her cheek just a little tinged with color, the almost
sad simplicity of her dress” (199), Bernard perceives Elsie‟s striking
beauty as threatening from the start: “She looked frightfully
handsome” (85). Her voice includes another element of oddness
because, even though it is low and she hardly makes it heard, when
she does it retains a peculiar characteristic: “Not a lisp, certainly, but
the least possible imperfection in articulating some of the lingual
sounds,—just enough to be noticed at first, and quite forgotten after
being a few times heard” (121-2).
Elsie belongs to an aristocratic family that lives in a mansion
at the foot of a mountain. Her only company is her father, Dudley
Venner, who lets her do whatever she wants, and old Sophy, a black
servant who has taken care of her since her mother died after giving
birth to her. Next to the mansion is Rattlesnake Ledge, a dangerous
9
For a deeper analysis of issues related to the medical gaze, sympathy and gender, see
Vrettos 91-96.

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cliff that Indians used to inhabit and where snakes breed (32). Since
she was a child, Elsie has escaped to this place whenever she has a
chance: “at the age of twelve she was missed one night, and was
found sleeping in the open air under a tree, like a wild creature” (98).
Despite their deep concern, neither her father nor Sophy can do
anything to prevent this. Every time she returns from one of her
trips, she brings some trophy of her adventure, normally in the
shape of some wild flower that only grows in inaccessible places.
Elsie also loves dancing to flamenco music. Dr. Kittredge, the
family doctor, finds her one day completely abandoned to this dance.
Spying her through a window, he analyzes the sensuality and
passion of her movements: “her lithe body undulating with flexuous
grace, her diamond eyes glittering, her round arms wreathing and
unwinding” (99). After her frenzied dance, she throws herself onto a
tiger skin that lies on the floor and falls asleep. This odd scene
brings memories of Elsie‟s mother, Catalina, to the doctor‟s mind.
Her name suggests she was a Spaniard.
Soon Bernard discovers the strange effect Elsie provokes on
those around her, especially on Helen, the submissive teacher. The
debilitated state of her nerves is revealed one night when she‟s
marking the compositions of her students and finds Elsie‟s.
Something about her elaborated handwriting and the sensuous
language she uses to describe the mountain “made her frightfully
nervous” (51) and bring her to the brink of a hysterical attack. The
episode contains echoes of the medical warnings of the time about
the catastrophic effect of reading sensational novels on the nervous
system: “Still she could not help reading” (51). Helen‟s nervous
weakness turns her into Elsie‟s perfect prey. On one occasion Elsie
manages to manipulate her teacher‟s behavior by using her
mesmeric powers.
10
With the girls‟ eyes fixed on her, Helen feels
10
Mesmerism was the doctrine of animal magnetism developed by the German
physician Anton Mesmer in the eighteenth century. He believed that we have an
invisible magnetic fluid which can be transmitted from one person to another. When
this fluid is out of balance, disease appears but it can be treated with magnets or
channeling the magnetic energy from one person to another. In order to demonstrate
this theory, many experiments were performed in which one or several subjects were
mesmerized. These experiments aroused public anxiety about the consequences of the
external manipulation of someone‟s behavior without their consent. Mesmerism was
unwelcomed by medicine, which considered it a pseudoscience (Bourne Taylor and
Shuttleworth 7). In the nineteenth century, James Braid struggled to distinguish
mesmerism from hypnosis (a term coined by him) thus establishing the basis for the
work to be developed by Charcot and Freud in the treatment of hysteria. For Braid,

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forced to stand up and go up to her. When she stands in front of her
she implores: “What do you want of me, Elsie Venner?” (54), to which
the girl replies calmly: “Nothing […] I thought I could make you
come” (54). After this, she gives her one of her wild flowers. The
coldness of her fingers as they touched hers makes the teacher
shiver.
Disconcerted by his pupil‟s odd behavior, Bernard sets out to
solve her mystery. One day he decides to go up into the mountain in
order to discover the origin of those wild flowers. Using a colonialist
rhetoric, the narrator describes how the main character follows
Elsie‟s trail through nature. The apparently idyllic environment hides
a disturbing reality that the naturalist scientist associates with the
behavior of the nervous woman:
[T]he little twigs are crossing and twining and separating like slender
fingers that cannot be still; the stray leaf is to be flattened into its
place like a truant curl; the limbs sway and twist, impatient of their
constrained attitude; and the rounded masses of foliage swell
upward and subside from time to time with long soft sighs […]. (123)
This description reminds the reader of Helen‟s character, whose
harmonious appearance hides a profound anxiety.
After finding a hairpin next to the place where the exotic
flowers grow, Bernard finds the entrance to a small cavern. His
desire is sparked as he fantasizes with the possibility of having found
her retreat: “carpeted and mirrored and with one of those tiger-skins
for a couch, such as they, say the girl loves to lie on […]” (126). Once
inside, what he finds instead is a couple of hypnotizing snake eyes
that inexplicably paralyze him. Just when he thinks he won‟t be able
to escape, Elsie appears behind him and with a penetrating look
frightens the snake away. What happens afterwards is faintly
remembered by Bernard—quietly, the young woman leads him back
to civilization:
Whether he had been awake or dreaming he did not feel quite sure
[…] the girl walking just before him;—there was no forgetting her
mesmerist phenomena do not depend on animal magnetism but on the physical and
mental causes that are provoked by the fixed stare at a bright object and that
influence the nervous system, producing hypnosis (61). It was believed that hypnosis
produces a change in the state of the nervous system similar to the one produced
during sleep (Scull 113).

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figure, as she walked on in silence, her braided locks falling a little,
for want of the lost hairpin, perhaps, and looking like a wreathing
coil of—Shame on such fancies!” (134). His ambivalent feelings of
desire, fear and rejection towards the girl bring Bernard to a state of
nervous irritability similar to Helen‟s.
For the young doctor, trained in affective hermeneutics—
2accustomed to watch the faces of those who were ailing in body or
mind, and to search in every line and tint for some underlying source
of disorder […]” (121), decoding Elsie‟s countenance is a real
challenge because it does not provide him with any information, she
is apparently incapable of showing any signs of emotion:
The light of those beautiful eyes was like the lustre of ice; in all her
features there was nothing of that human warmth which shows that
sympathy has reached the soul beneath the mask of flesh it wears.
The look was that of remoteness, of utter isolation […] Her color did
not come and go like that of young girls under excitement. (121-2)
Elsie‟s secret is soon revealed to the reader: during
pregnancy, her mother was bitten by a snake (33-34) and the poison
was transmitted to the fetus in utero.
11
Thus, the girl has had the
poison in her system since she was a child. The impression that the
first sight of her baby produces in her mother when she repairs on
the fatal mark in her little neck is too much for her and dies a few
days later (128). After this, the father can hardly stand looking at his
daughter: not only does she stir painful memories, but her behavior
is too bizarre. Despite his effort to accept her eccentricities and get
used to the coldness and hypnotism of her eyes, he can‟t help feeling
a mixture of aversion and fear in her presence: “Sometimes she
would seem to be fond of him, and the parent‟s heart would yearn
within him as she twined her supple arms about him; and then some
look she gave him, some half-articulated expression, would turn his
cheek pale and almost make him shiver” (102). The instability and
incoherence of Elsie‟s attitude are described as proofs of her hysteria.
On the other hand, her father‟s problems of communication with her
contrast with Elsie‟s total synergy with the superstitious Sophy, the
11
The topic of the ophidian woman is not exclusive to Holmes. The author himself in
the preface admits the influence of Keats‟ poem “Lamia” (4), which Elsie reads aloud to
her classmates inducing hysterical symptoms in them (140). For a comparison with
Hawthorne‟s tale “Rappaccinni‟s Daughter” see Gallagher.

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only person that understands her. The mysterious daughter of an
African slave, “with those quick, animal-looking eyes of hers,—she
was said to be the granddaughter of a cannibal chief, and inherited
the keen senses belonging to all creatures which are hunted as game
[…]. Old Sophy nodded her head ominously, as if she could say a
great deal more” (101). She has always looked after Elsie replacing
her absent mother and can interpret her as if she were an open
book: “[She] could do more with her than anybody, knowing her by
long instinctive study” (97). The communication between both
women is primitive and silent but also unidirectional: it is Sophy who
reads Elsie‟s face to interpret her emotions. Elsie does not show any
signs of this hermeneutic capacity because the snake lacks empathy.
Her eccentricity and the impact of her presence in her
environment are made manifest at a big party celebrated at Colonel
Sprowle‟s residence. All the important families of Rockland are
invited. Elsie‟s dramatic entrance on the arm of her father makes
everybody hold their breath. Spectacularly dressed in silk, covered in
jewelry—even in her hair—: “She was, indeed, an apparition of wild
beauty […] when she moved, the groups should part to let her pass
through them, and that she should carry the centre of all looks and
thoughts with her” (68). As Armstrong puts it, the woman as
spectacle is the object of moral distrust because she lacks the
capacity for self-regulation: “she cannot be ‛seen‟ and still be vigilant”
(77). Feeling all these eyes on her, she throws back the challenging
look of a caged animal.
Amongst those who observe her closely is Dr. Kittredge: “His
eyes were fixed steadily on the dark girl, every movement of whom he
seemed to follow” (67-68). In the presence of such spectacle, his
medical gaze immediately reacts to try and decipher its language
(Foucault, Birth 108). The conversation between them is miles away
from the typical exchange between the virtuous young woman and
the doctor of other novels. Her answers to his questions are
unsettling: “It‟s been dull at the mansion-house […] there‟s nobody to
hate” (68). The doctor analyzes his interlocutors through his
spectacles which, as the speculum for medical practice, function as
an instrument to achieve knowledge, to extract the truth, without
any need for words. However, when he tries this procedure with
Elsie, he confronts a look that does not give in:
[H]e lifted his head and dropped his eyes a little, so as to see her
through his spectacles. She narrowed her lids slightly, as one often

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sees a sleepy cat narrow hers […]. The old Doctor felt very oddly as
she looked at him: he did not like the feeling, so he dropped his head
and lifted his eyes and looked at her over his spectacles again. (69)
In this visual duel, the doctor ends up giving in to the
magnetic power of Elsie‟s eyes. As the young girl talks to him about
her life at the mansion, she refers to her father by his first name,
Dudley. This reflects how far she is from the feminine domestic
model. This reflects how far she is from the feminine domestic model
popularized by the “Cult of True Womanhood.”
12
The American
equivalent to “the angel in the house,” “the true woman,” was an
example of delicacy, morality and spirit of sacrifice. Her nurturing
power to transform the house into an idyllic place where men find
shelter from the public sphere contrasts strikingly with Elsie, who
turns it into a nightmarish environment. Her disturbing question:
“What kills anybody quickest, Doctor?” (69), immediately followed by
a whispering: “I ran away the other day, you know” (69), is obviously
intended to scandalize the doctor who, despite being familiar with
her trips to the mountain, can‟t help worrying when she gives him
one of her exotic flowers: “he knew that there was only one spot
where it grew, and that not one where any rash foot, least of all a
thin-shod woman‟s foot, should venture” (69). But, as Sophy would
once ask him sharply: “Who tol‟ you Elsie was a woman, Doctor?”
(227).
Elsie‟s gaze is diagnosed by the novel‟s doctors as poisonous
(136) because it weakens its victims and provokes uneasiness
13
or
even illness, as in Helen‟s case (Davis 185). Both Holmes and his
pupil, Silas Weir Mitchell, devoted much attention to the figure of the
hysteric,
14
whom Holmes compared to a vampire “who sucks the
12
See Barbara Welter‟s seminal article for an in-depth study on this figure.
13
Whereas Helen‟s eyes transmit Bernard peace and security— “so full of cheerful
patience, so sincere, that he had trusted her from the first moment as the believers of
the larger half of Christendom trust the Blessed Virgin, […]” (199), Elsie‟s “evil eye”
(144) provokes restlessness.
14
The figure of the hysteric, with her bewildering array of symptoms, was an enigma
for Victorian medicine. According to medical debates, her defiance of the normative
model of domesticity had turned her into a hypersexualized version of the angel in the
house, a nervous woman or an invalid. Replicating the impact that this illness had in
nineteenth-century medicine, literature and society, over the last decades many
historians have studied the complexity of the hysteric in depth. This way, their
treatments, the impact this diagnosis had on their immediate relatives, and the
difficult position of the physician between the patient and their families have been

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blood of the healthy people around her” (quoted in Mitchell 49).
Elsie‟s power over her victims is that of a vampire. Actually, she
hypnotizes Helen to sap her energy to such an extent that Bernard
fears for her life (139). One day, at a tea party, Bernard realizes that
Elsie is trying to exert her influence over Letty Forrester, reverend
Honeywood‟s granddaughter, with whom he had been timidly flirting.
The narrator describes the sensations of Letty, who, disconcerted,
feels as if she were being trapped at a spider‟s web and listened to
her eyes‟ call (201). At this moment, Bernard must make an almost
superhuman effort to prevent Elsie from hypnotizing her, trying to
divert her gaze from Letty to him:
He turned to Elsie and looked at her in such a way as to draw her
eyes upon him. Then he looked steadily and calmly into them. It was
a great effort, for some perfectly inexplicable reason. At one instant
he thought he could not sit where he was […] Then he wanted to
take away his eyes from hers; there was something intolerable in the
light that came from them. (202)
The visual duel between Elsie and one of the doctors that watches
her is thus repeated, however, this time, it is Elsie who finally gives
up: “Presently she changed color slightly […] and turned away
baffled, and shamed […]” (202). A key moment in the novel, this is
the first time the protagonist has ever shown a sign of emotion.
Another character that participates in this visual dynamics is
Richard Venner, who makes a dramatic appearance halfway through
the story. Elsie‟s cousin, he also lost his mother when he was a child.
Another similarity with Elsie is the fact that his mother was a
foreigner too, in this case, Argentinian. His wild and passionate
nature turns him into Elsie‟s alter ego. Playmates during their
childhood, old Sophy never took her eyes from them: “Both
handsome, wild, impetuous, unmanageable, they played and fought
together like two young leopards, beautiful, but dangerous, their
lawless instincts showing through all their graceful movements”
(100). Once, in one of their frequent fights when they were children,
Elsie jumped over him and sank her teeth in his wrist. Even though
Dr. Kittredge rushed to heal him, the attack left a scar that still
hurts every time he watches her (106).
subjects for extensive discussion. Some fine examples of this analysis can be found in
Scull, Ehrenreich and English 147-154, and Smith-Rosenberg 197-216.

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It was not the first time that something similar had
happened. Among other examples of unsettling behavior during her
childhood, Sophy witnessed how as a baby, Elsie bit her wet nurse
provoking her sudden death (159). This episode represents a
shocking twist of the social and medical anxieties of the time about
the act of breast-feeding, particularly when it was undertaken by wet
nurses.
15
The possibility that these women—typically of working-
class origin—might transmit some disease to the baby fueled fears of
the wet nurse as a source of contamination; only, this time, the baby
is the origin of the poison. Thus, the idyllic domestic picture of a
baby being breastfed is dramatically reversed in the case of Elsie,
turning her into a vampire figure.
Richard‟s return after so many years arouses suspicion in
Rockland, especially in Judge Thornton. He uses his ability to detect
marks of degeneration in the young man‟s face to justify his
distrust:
16
[T]here is an expression in all the sort of people who live by their wits
when they can, and by worse weapons when their wits fail them,
that we old law-doctors know just as well as the medical counsellors
know the marks of disease in a man‟s face. Dr. Kittredge looks at a
man and says he is going to die; I look at another man and say he is
going to be hanged, if nothing happens. (118)
For Thornton this was an ability shared by professionals such as
judges and doctors to use external signs in order to access the truth
of individuals. However, it is not only reserved to professionals:
Sophy, trained in this ability in a natural way, is perfectly aware of
something dark in Richard, though “she could not tell what” (132).
An excellent jockey and hiding a dark past, Richard‟s
intentions are no other than marrying his cousin so as to pocket the
family fortune. But before that, he knows he will have to tame her
like one of his wild horses, so he tries to seduce her using all his arts
(120). Her apparent initial interest gradually leads to indifference,
which makes him suspect she is attracted to her teacher. When he
15
See section VIII, “Choice of a Wet Nurse,” of Thomas Bull‟s famous manual Hints to
Mothers (284-287).
16
Clearly influenced by the precepts of physiognomy and phrenology, anthropologists
like Cesare Lombroso in 1876 argued that the marks of degeneration are visible in the
criminal‟s physical characteristics facilitating recognition by any person trained in this
ability.

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asks her about him, she surprisingly blushes: “Dick could not
remember that he had ever seen her show this mark of emotion
before” (232). Deciding to find proof of his suspicion, he breaks into
her bedroom during one of her trips to the mountain. This violation
of her privacy reproduces the episode in which Bernard invades her
natural space in the mountain.
Richard is not immune to Elsie‟s hypnotism either, nor can he
understand her eyes‟ strange mystery: “There was a strange
fascination in her eyes, too, which at times was quite irresistible, so
that he would feel himself drawn to her by a power which seemed to
take away his will for the moment” (106). His desire is palpable in the
face of the undeniable sensuality of her serpentine ways.
One of the most striking aspects about this nineteenth
century novel is Elsie‟s freedom. She has been raised by a distant
father in the absence of her mother. Her doctor recommends
avoiding any interference in her behaviour, suggesting continued
vigilance instead (98). When she became a teenager and expressed
her wish to go to a girls‟ school, he convinced her father to let her
have her own way: “Anything to interest her. Friendship, love,
religion, whatever will set her nature at work. We must have
headway on, or there will be no piloting her. Action first of all” (129).
Actually, that is how she takes her classes, as a pastime, attending
whenever she feels like it and, when not, running away to the
mountain (120). Despite the danger of these escapes, no one stops
her. In the interactions between Dr. Kittredge and his patient
throughout the novel, we can hardly find any conversations between
them, just constant observation. As Foucault suggests: “The
observing gaze refrains from intervening: it is silent and gestureless
[…]” (Birth 107). To undertake this task, he finds Sophy‟s invaluable
help, whom he trusts as his principal surveillance instrument (128-
9). The doctor recognizes in Elsie‟s silence a cause for alarm: “Beware
of the woman who cannot find free utterance for all her stormy inner
life either in words or song! So long as a woman can talk, there is
nothing she cannot bear” (221). He also advises her father to
facilitate her contact with possible suitors: “If she will be friendly
with any young people, have them to see her,—young men especially.
She will not love any one easily, perhaps not at all; yet love would be
more like to bring her right than anything else” (128-9). This was one
of the main recommendations of nineteenth century treatment of
hysteria: channelling the sexuality of the patient which, far from
being repressed as we find in other heroines, is threatening and out

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of control. In relation to this, Thomas J. Graham, a famous
nineteenth-century physician, insisted that marriage “is the best
cure for hysteria” (188).
Dr. Kittredge, like Holmes, “knew what a nervous woman is,
and how to manage her” (67). His purpose is, then, to supervise her
sexuality. Implicit in this medical supervision was the need to watch
for signs of “solitary practices.” In one of the most famous medical
manuals of the time, Dr. Dixon quoted Dr. Columbat who warned:
[I]dleness, […] or sedentary life, the constant contact of the two
sexes, and the frequenting of places where everything inspires
pleasure; prolonged watching, excessive dancing, frivolous
occupations, and the study of the arts that give too great activity to
the imagination; erotic reading; the pernicious establishment of
artificial puberty […] [will keep] the genital system in a state of
constant excitation. (115)
The origin of this concern came from a popular physiological
theory, common to both sexes, that conceived the body as a closed
system of energy.
17
According to it, energy needed to be sensibly
administrated along the life of a person in order to avoid being
wasted. This way, masturbation threatened to drain the individual‟s
energy and destroy their reproductive capacity, something that in the
case of women was particularly dangerous because, as Poovey
reminds us: “it grounded an economy that was perceived to be
continuously internally unstable” (Scenes 36).
Ideally, parents would assist physicians in the detection of
many of these signs. In the same manual, Dr. Dixon noted: “if the
powers of life are to be preserved in certain delicate females of a
nervous temperament, parents must be perfectly acquainted with
their most secret thoughts and actions” (58). However, in the case of
Elsie, her father seems oblivious to her sexual awakening, although
his inability to admit it might be due to his awareness of her
peculiarities: “reasons which seemed to make it impossible that she
should attract a suitor. Who would dare to marry Elsie?” (176-7).
Sophy, however, is perfectly aware of such changes, which she
perceives as ominous: “It‟s my poor girl, my darling, my beauty, my
baby, that‟s grown up to be a woman; she will come to a bad end;
17
This theory, in turn, is connected to Physics, specifically to the law of conservation
of energy or the first law of thermodynamics, stated in 1824.

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she will do something that will make them kill her or shut her up all
her life” (158).
Elsie plays a seduction game with the men that surround her:
Bernard, Richard and even Dr. Kittredge. In her relationship with
men, it is always her who takes the initiative and keeps control. As
for Richard, when he realizes he has just been used as a toy, he tries
to kill Bernard using a lasso but he fails and ends up badly injured
himself. When Bernard returns to the institute after this incident,
Elsie can‟t help her emotion. Her ophidian nature starts a process of
transformation which is reflected in her eyes:
[T]hey seemed to lose their cold glitter, and soften into a strange,
dreamy tenderness. The deep instincts of womanhood were striving
to grope their way to the surface of her being through all the alien
influences which overlaid them. She could be secret and cunning in
working out any of her dangerous impulses, but she did not know
how to mask the unwonted feeling which fixed her eyes and her
thoughts upon the only person who had ever reached the spring of
her hidden sympathies. (254-5)
Consequently, her feminine nature is striving to come out to the
surface. When, later on, she decides to go to church with her father,
she feels compelled to cover her face with a veil in order to avoid all
the curious looks (267). This scene presents the heroine as a text at
a delicate moment for her interpretation; once more, her body is
represented as spectacle.
18
Despite Bernard‟s insistence on the scientific nature of his
interest for Elsie (141) and his fraternal feelings towards her, his
attraction is obvious, but he is aware of the danger:
This gave Master Langdon a good chance to study her ways when
her eye was on her book, to notice the inflections of her voice, to
watch for any expression of her sentiments; for, to tell the truth, he
18
The specular nature of medical practices in the nineteenth century kept the female
body under continuous surveillance and scrutiny. In order to illustrate lectures to
medical students, the bodies of poor women (both alive and dead) were displayed in
classrooms that imitated theaters (Vrettos 6). Another example of how the medical
gaze was increasingly invested with power was the invention of the aforementioned
speculum around 1840 by Dr. Marion Sims, which allowed physicians to explore
previously inaccessible areas that many perceived as uncharted territory. In a similar
vein, the development of the neurologist Jean Martin Charcot‟s work on hysteria at the
Parisian hospital La Salpêtrière in the 1870‟s boosted photography as a valuable tool
to analyze the behavior and physical traits of female patients.

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had a kind of fear that the girl had taken a fancy to him, and,
though she interested him, he did not wish to study her heart from
the inside. (121)
Even though he is the best candidate amongst her suitors—
due to his aristocratic origins, his education, his promising career as
a physician, his athletic build, his attractiveness—there are two
moments in the novel in which certain characters warn against a
possible relationship between Elsie and Bernard. First, Dr. Kittredge,
from a professional perspective, tells him: “If, through pitying that
girl, you ever come to love her, you are lost” (141). Interestingly, the
doctor contradicts here his own recommendations of favouring
Elsie‟s romantic relationships, however, this time the warning is
addressed from one physician to another: the doctor‟s excess of
sympathy towards his patient could be fatal. Setting himself as an
example in the relationship doctor-patient, it is vital to keep distance
and objectivity.
Later on, Sophy, in her irrational and superstitious logic,
reminds Dr. Kittredge: “Doctor, nobody mus‟n‟ never marry our Elsie
„s longs she lives! Nobody mus‟ n‟ never live with Elsie but ol Sophy
[…]” (226). She fears that her sexuality might free the poison kept in
her body and her children inherit her monstrous condition. Sophy‟s
fears are also confessed to her pastor, the Calvinist reverend
Honeywood, leading him to a theological dilemma as he starts to
question the doctrine of moral responsibility.
19
These doubts are also
shared by the narrator of the story in a letter to Bernard (148), as
well as by Dr. Kittredge who, in a long discussion with the reverend,
asserts: “We have constant reasons for noticing the transmission of
qualities from parents to offspring, and we find it hard to hold a child
accountable in any moral point of view for inherited bad temper or
tendency to drunkenness,—as hard as we should to blame him for
inheriting gout or asthma” (210).
The transformation of Elsie‟s gaze is particularly evident one
day she is heading to school: “[She] had none of the still, wicked light
in her eyes, that morning. She looked gentle, but dreamy” (273).
19
Holmes himself admitted that with this novel he “attempted to illustrate the doctrine
of inherited moral responsibility for other people‟s misbehavior” (5). One of the main
voices in the public debate about moral responsibility was Cesare Lombroso with his
theory about “the born criminal.” He suggested that a person cannot be completely
blamed for their antisocial tendencies because genetic inheritance plays a very
important role in behavior (Lombroso 40-41).

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None of these changes escape her classmates‟ scrutiny: “All the girls
had their eyes on her. None so keen as these young misses to know
an inward movement by an outward sign of adornment” (272). It is
precisely the day when she decides to declare her love to Bernard,
who rejects her trying to make her understand she is just like a
sister to him. He finally gives in to his fear of her wild nature.
Immediately after this scene, Elsie falls ill. The correlation between
her romantic disappointment and her illness is clear. When Sophy
goes to her bedroom “[s]he found Elsie lying on her bed, her brows
strongly contracted, her eyes dull, her whole look that of great
suffering” (274). Elsie herself asks for Dr. Kittredge.
The attention that she receives from Dr. Kittredge is an
example of professionalism. The narrator insists on the need to avoid
that the doctor‟s face turn into a text for his patient: “an
imperturbable mask of serenity, proof against anything and
everything in a patient‟s aspect. The physician whose face reflects his
patient‟s condition like a mirror may do well enough to examine
people for a life-insurance office, but does not belong to the
sickroom” (274). As he comes into Elsie‟s bedroom, the entire
apparatus of vigilance is activated: “he sat a few minutes, looking at
her all the time with a kind of fatherly interest, but with it all noting
how she lay, how she breathed, her color, her expression, all that
teaches the practised eye so much without a single question being
asked” (275). Like the doctor, Sophy does not need words to read
Elsie: “The old woman looked at her without speaking, but
questioning her with every feature as to the sorrow that was
weighing on her” (270). What is the difference between their gazes
then? Whereas the medical gaze is professionally authorized, Sophy‟s
gaze is linked to a primary communication: “having brought her food
[…] set it down, not speaking, but looking into her eyes inquiringly,
like a dumb beast trying to feel out his master‟s will in his face”
(121). As we can see, the parallelisms between Sophy and a watching
animal are recurrent. For Holmes, her capacity for codifying and
decoding emotional outward signs respond to a primitive need, a
regression to a former evolutionary state: “it was impossible not to
see in this old creature a hint of the gradations by which life climbs
up through the lower natures to the highest human developments”
(156). Her wild nature and her command of the language of feelings
as a type of feminine communication superior to verbal language
have allowed her look after the snake-Elsie whom everyone else
feared:

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Elsie looked her in the face, but did not answer in words. What
strange intelligence was that which passed between them through
the diamond eyes and the little beady black ones?—what subtle
intercommunication, penetrating so much deeper than articulate
speech? This was the nearest approach to sympathetic relations that
Elsie ever had: a kind of dumb intercourse of feeling, such as one
sees in the eyes of brute mothers looking on their young. (271)
However, though Sophy naturally takes on the role of Elsie‟s
nurse during her illness, her excess of sympathy with her patient
threatens her own health. Throughout the girl‟s life, Sophy‟s health
has evolved according to Elsie‟s state. In winter, when the girl used
to be relaxed, docile and “her eye would lose something of its strange
lustre” (170), the old woman‟s anxiety would be reduced, making her
look even younger. But when spring came and Elsie‟s gaze awoke,
peace would disappear from Sophy‟s life: “the light would kindle
afresh in her eyes, and the old woman‟s sleep would grow restless
again” (171).
Interestingly, during her illness Elsie asks for a new nurse:
Helen Darley. This new need fits easily in the context of Elsie‟s
incipient transformation, when her feminine nature struggles to gain
ground. The delicate and compassionate Helen is the closest
character to Elsie that embodies the domestic qualities of the ideal
nurse.
20
The difference with Sophy lies in her social class and her
race. When Sophy learns the news about the arrival of the new
nurse, she snaps: “The‟ „s nobody that‟s white can love y‟ as th‟ ol
black woman does” (279). In the novel, Helen represents civilization
whereas Sophy symbolizes primitiveness. Both are patient and good
at affective hermeneutics, but Sophy‟s knowledge of Elsie is much
20
The ideal nurse, with her spirit of sacrifice and sensibility, represented the
embodiment of the true woman in Victorian culture. Her function was in fact
considered a natural extension of her maternal instinct. Most interestingly, this figure
intervened in the conflict of sympathy of the doctor towards the patient‟s emotions.
Her natural ability for affective hermeneutics complemented the role of doctors,
enabling them to concentrate on their patients‟ treatment without the threat of
emotional involvement. One of the most iconic examples of the Victorian nurse was
Florence Nightingale, who published the famous manual Notes on Nursing (1860). For
an in depth analysis of this figure, see chapter 6 “The Housewifely Woman: The Social
Construction of Florence Nightingale” in Poovey (Uneven Developments), and chapter 1
“Angels of Mercy” in Swenson, as well as Reverby for a specific study of American
nursing.

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more sophisticated. Submission is another difference between them.
Unlike Helen, Sophy is not a submissive woman, maybe due to her
ambiguous position in the mansion since Elsie‟s birth. In the
absence of the mistress of the house and empowered by the fact that
she is the only person whom Elsie tolerates, Sophy has assumed a
superior position in comparison to the rest of servants. Actually,
when the doctor wants to learn about Elsie‟s state, he goes directly to
her, instead of her father.
As Helen looks after Elsie, she witnesses how her human side
strives to come to the surface and for the first time she is capable of
looking her in the eye without fear of being mesmerized:
Helen looked into her eyes without that nervous agitation which
their cold glitter had produced on her when they were full of their
natural light. She felt sure that her mother must have been a lovely,
gentle woman. There were gleams of a beautiful nature shining
through some ill-defined medium which disturbed and made them
flicker and waver […]. (279)
Thus, the image of Elsie‟s mother comes to Helen‟s mind right as she
plays the role of the maternal nurse: “She sat with Elsie most of the
time, by day and by night, soothing her, and trying to enter into her
confidence and affections […]” (279). Still, something keeps holding
Elsie back, preventing Helen to complete her reading: “even now
there were times when she would lie looking at her, with such a still,
watchful, almost dangerous expression, that Helen would sigh, and
change her place …” (279). Therefore, Elsie‟s double nature provokes
in Helen exactly the same mixture of feelings as in her father.
As Elsie gets worse, the doctor‟s face turns graver (284). One
day, the young girl receives a basket of flowers and autumn leaves
that her classmates have gathered with Bernard‟s help. To everyone‟s
alarm, the touch of some of these leaves makes her suffer a
hysterical attack: “[she] looked upon the olive-purple leaflets as if
paralyzed for a moment, shrunk up, as it were into herself in a
curdling terror, dashed the basket from her, and fell back senseless,
with a faint cry which chilled the blood of the startled listeners at her
bedside” (284-5). The leaves turn out to be white ash which,
according to superstition, is lethal to snakes. Although this incident
increases Elsie‟s weakness, it also seems to have defeated her
ophidian nature. The first to see this is Sophy: “The shadows ceased
flitting over her features, and the old woman, who watched her from

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day to day and from hour as a mother watches her child, saw the
likeness she bore to her mother coming forth more and more, as the
cold glitter died out of the diamond eyes” (285). Her father also
notices this and when one day, by her sickbed, he remarks how
much she now reminds him of her mother, Elsie bursts into tears
(286). According to Cynthia Davis, this episode constitutes an
example of Foucault‟s concept of self-regulation
21
—Elsie moves from
being watched to watching herself, so she has internalized the
medical gaze: “she redirects it, turning it inward, in order to uncover
finally and unbind the woman the doctors had already detected
lurking inside her seemingly snaky exterior” (187). Another proof of
the victory of her feminine nature is found in her sudden capacity to
interpret the signs of emotion in her father‟s face: “[she] lifted her
languid eyes upon her father‟s face, she saw in it a tenderness, a
depth of affection such as she remembered at rare moments of her
childhood […]” (286). This is an ability for affective hermeneutics that
was absent during the dominance of her serpentine side. However,
though her inhuman nature has perished, the human nature does
not survive either.
Meanwhile, in Elsie‟s sickroom, melodramatic scenes follow
one another. In one of her last moments, Elsie asks Sophy who will
miss her after she is gone, which makes the old woman fall into
despair. Just at this moment, Helen enters the room and with one
look manages to calm her down:
22
“Such scenes were just what were
most dangerous, in the state in which Elsie was lying” (292). The
protection of the emotional environment of the patient has always
been one of the key recommendations from doctors to nurses. The
hysterical nurse threatens her patient‟s health polluting her
environment.
The effect of Elsie‟s death on Sophy is that of an animal who
has lost its owner: “[She] said almost nothing, but sat day and night
by her dead darling. But sometimes her anguish would find an outlet
21
Foucault connected this idea to Bentham‟s perfected system of surveillance, the
Panopticon, in which the omnipresence of vigilance would guarantee the
internalization of obedience (Discipline 195). The ultimate sign of the success of their
professionalization, medicine aspired to achieve this ideal in which women facilitated
permanent visibility and wouldn‟t need to be scrutinized by the doctor anymore,
because vigilance comes from inside.
22
Helen‟s presence of mind in this scene in contrast to Sophy‟s hysterical behavior
marks a remarkable transformation from her own nervous instability at the beginning
of the novel.

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in strange sounds, something between a cry and a musical note,—
such as noise had ever heard her utter before” (294). Her voice is
almost inhuman.
Days after Elsie‟s burial, the mansion is shaken by an
earthquake that opens a deep crack in the adjoining cliff, swallowing
Rattlesnake Ledge and all the serpents that lived in it (300).
Convinced that it is doom‟s day, Sophy collapses on Elsie‟s tomb.
She is buried at the feet of Elsie‟s and her mother‟s tombs,
something significant given the fact that, when she was nursing
Elsie, just before the arrival of Helen, the old woman asks her to let
her stay at her feet to keep watching her (279).
Throughout the novel, many episodes have presented Elsie‟s
body as spectacle: during her dancing frenzies, at the Colonel‟s
party, in the church, at the school. This way, the end of her life could
not be less: her corpse is exposed by her family for public scrutiny.
Everybody in the village queues “to look upon Elsie‟s face once more
[…] see her in the still beauty of death […]. All was ready for the sad
or curious eyes which were to look upon her” (295). These curious
eyes search in her neck the birthmark she used to hide behind a
necklace, only to find that it has disappeared with the snake‟s death.
There is nothing to fear now.
The sentimental narrative of the end of the novel reaches its
climax with the wedding between Dudley and Helen, as well as with
the engagement of Bernard with the sweet (and rich) heiress Letty
Forrester. Bernard completes his medical training successfully
reading a doctoral thesis that studies Elsie‟s case and that
consolidates him as a professional. This piece of work represents the
victory of the medical gaze and the logical result of the status of her
body as spectacle throughout her life: “Despite her best efforts, Elsie
is inexorably transformed via the triplicate force of the narrative‟s
medical gazes from self-author to objectified text” (Davis 187). Her
voice is definitively silenced to listen to what medicine has to say
about her.
Elsie Venner is a novel in which most of its characters do not
fit in the traditional gender roles. Dudley Venner is one of them. His
dread of Elsie‟s hysterical reactions has contributed to improve his
ability to interpret her outward signs: “He knew well, by every change
of her countenance, by her movements, by every varying curve of her
graceful figure, the transitions from passion to repose, from fierce
excitement to the dull languor which often succeeded her threatening
paroxysms” (250). Consequently, his emasculation could be the

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result of his loss of authority at a home where power has moved from
the father to the monstrous child.
On the other hand, we find Bernard. His confessed sensibility
towards his patients contributes to his emasculation, which is
intensified when he meets Elsie. Despite his initial masculine
attitude, he eventually turns into an object manipulated by Elsie—
like when he goes into the mountain to end up being rescued by her.
The scene of Elsie‟s declaration of her love for him is another
example of this role reversion: “He turned pale, he trembled almost,
as if he had been a woman listening to her lover‟s declaration” (273).
The only moment he manages to overcome her power is when he
prevents her from hypnotizing Letty, appealing to her feminine
nature.
Regarding Elsie, we have analyzed her double nature. As the
serpent, she is the one who brings evil to paradise. For Burbick, this
novel functioned as a cautionary tale for the white middle class
about the dangers threatening the health of their reproduction (1).
Apart from the debilitation of the female nervous system as a
consequence of work (as in Helen‟s example), another threat to the
health of the nation was the mixture of blood. Although Elsie also
belongs to the aristocracy, she fails to be a good match for Bernard
because she has been polluted by her contact with other cultures,
races and ethnicities considered morally inferior. The poisoning of
her mother‟s blood by the snake and the transmission of this venom
to her daughter symbolize the consequences of contacts with “the
other.” In Elsie‟s case, these “others” are:
 Her Spanish mother who, after death, is replaced by
a black servant of African origin. She is also looked
after by a Spanish governess for some years.
 Her Argentinian cousin, her only playmate when
she was a child.
 The Gypsies whose dressing style she imitates and
who, like her, prove to be immune to serpents.
 The Indians who used to inhabit the mountain that
she regards as a refuge. When the area is destroyed
by the earthquake, peace and security return.
 Reverend Fairweather who, although he belongs to
the Unitary Church, converts to Catholicism and is
too busy with his own spirituality to attend Elsie‟s
needs. Likewise, Calvinist reverend Honeywood,

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whom Sophy seeks for help, also goes through a
spiritual crisis.
By the end of the novel, Elsie has had contact with every racial and
religious group that threatened the white protestant middle class
hegemony in America (Burbick 246). The novel is thus an example of
the young nation‟s anxiety about social order and the constant
danger of chaos and instability.
On the other hand, Elsie‟s love for Bernard awakens her
human nature. As we have seen, the signs of emotion she tries to
repress reveal a femininity that aligns her with Helen and that
prompts her father to identify her with her mother (287).
However, as Weinstein reminds us, Elsie‟s double nature is
problematic (88). Neither her ophidian nature nor her domestic side
can explain her passionate character and overflowing sexuality.
These traits are rather present in her Spanish mother. We must not
forget that it is her image which comes to Dr. Kittredge‟s mind when
he watches Elsie dancing. Although everybody describes her mother
as an angel, the doctor links her with this unchecked passion, what
seems to suggest that he may have treated her as a patient.
The novel reveals the contemporary perception that medicine
had of female sexuality as incomprehensible and mysterious. All the
women in the novel are victims of their emotions. Actually, it finishes
with three buried women and two happily married men about to lead
a fulfilling life (Burbick 243). The only female character that survives
is Helen, who leaves her job to embrace her domestic role as Mrs.
Venner. Not in vain, she “looked like an angel” (313) on her wedding
day.
This is a story in which rescues follow one another—Bernard
rescues Helen from working exploitation, Elsie rescues Bernard in
the mountain, Bernard rescues Letty from Elsie‟s hypnotism, Dudley
rescues Helen from spinsterhood—so, when Bernard rejects Elsie, he
is refusing to rescue her. Doing it would have meant accepting the
victory of the powerful woman, something inconceivable for Holmes
(Weinstein 88). Elsie must be sacrificed at the end in order to
reassert the doctor‟s masculinity; there is no other possibility for her.
The power of her gaze, which represents a wild nature, is eventually
annihilated by the medical gaze. Like Holmes once confessed to
Mitchell, this was his motivation as a natural scientist: “I liked to
follow the workings of another mind through these minute, teasing
investigations to see a relentless observer get hold of Nature and

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squeeze her until the sweat broke out all over her and Sphincters
loosened” (quoted in Ehrenreich and English 84).
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