‘A Noble Type of Good Heroic Womanhood’: The Popular Rhetoric of Florence Nightingale’s Enshrinement

Abstract

Reviews the process by which Nightingale became canonized through Victorian rhetoric because she did not comply with gendered expectations about women. Believes the press actively shaped images of her in art and literature to render her anomalous ideas and powerful career more culturally acceptable; sainthood provided a paradigm through which Nightingale’s exceptional behavior could be accounted for without threatening her widely proclaimed position at the pinnacle of British womanhood.