Doctors in Dialogue : Doctor-Patient Interactions in Villette and Middlemarch

Abstract

Charlotte Bronte's Villette and George Eliot's Middlemarch encourage the reader to consider the interactions among a plurality of voices and perspectives. This dialogic framework, I will argue, contributes to our understanding of the doctor-patient relationships that occur in the texts: although their fictional practitioners interact with patients differently, both Bronte and Eliot suggest that open dialogue between doctors and patients is essential to the healing process. Specifically, doctors must engage with multiple perspectives and discourses in order to diagnose and treat their patients effectively. These writers examine the dialogic nature of nineteenth century medical discourse as the voices of both doctors and patients destabilize scientific terminology, diagnostic categories, and treatments. By analysing the interactions between these competing voices, I endeavor to comment on the doctors' use of authority, and on the extent to which they choose to facilitate or frustrate dialogic interaction with their patients.