Bound Women: The Plight of the Other in Florence Nightingale’s ‘Cassandra

Abstract

Explains how in Cassandra, Nightingale argues against the English woman’s relegation to the domestic sphere by imaging her as Other, most vividly through allusions to Chinese footbinding, a statue of the Archangel Michael, and the mythic figure of Cassandra; in this way Nightingale demonstrates both the relative homogeneity of English women and men, as well as the barbarity of English men and the cultural institutions they promote.