Hostname: page-component-7c8c6479df-24hb2 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-03-28T13:32:45.348Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Healthy Heroines: Sue Barton, Lillian Wald, Lavinia Lloyd Dock and the Henry Street Settlement

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 April 1999

DEBORAH PHILIPS
Affiliation:
Department of Arts, Brunel University, 300 St. Margaret Road, Twickerham, Middlesex TW1 1PT

Abstract

Sue Barton is the fictional redhaired nursing heroine of a series of novels written for young women. Recalled by several generations of women readers with affection, Sue Barton has remained in print ever since the publication of the first novel in the series: Sue Barton, Student Nurse, written by Helen Dore Boylston, was published in America in 1936. Neither the covers of her four novels now in paperback, nor the publisher's catalogue entry, however, acknowledge Sue Barton's age: “Sue Barton Series – The everyday stories of redheaded Sue Barton and hospital life as she progresses from being a student nurse through her varied nursing career.”

The catalogue entry for the series and the novels' paperback covers now claim Sue Barton as a contemporary young woman, poised for romance. Sue is, however, a pre-war heroine, and very much located within an American history and tradition of nursing. With her close contemporary, Cherry Ames, Sue Barton is one of the nursing heroines who were to establish a genre in popular fiction for young women, the career novel, and, more particularly, the nursing career novel.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
© 1999 Cambridge University Press

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)