Bramwell

I've always been fascinated with medicine, despite the fact that I have absolutely no aptitude for science, and doing dissection in 7th grade, I was nauseous all the time, even though we were just dissecting frogs and fish. The smell of formaldehyde to this day makes me gag. Still, I find myself watching medical shows like "ER" and "Grey's Anatomy" eagerly. I used to love to play that medical game where you had to remove the body parts with like tweezers without touching the sides. I used to devour this medical encylopedia that we had. Of course, every disease I read about, I thought that I had.

It finally dawned on me, that I liked playing a doctor, I didn't actually want to be one! Still, it made wonder what it must have been like for the first woman to try and enter the medical profession or the first woman to every try and get a law degree. I remember reading about Elizabeth Blackwell, and her struggles to get accepted by a medical school in this country, until finally a college up in Geneva, NY accepted her totally as a joke. They never expected her to actually succeed as a doctor.

That's why I loved the series Bramwell on PBS. Jemma Redgrave (one of the Redgrave clan) starred as Eleanor Bramwell. Eleanor came from an upper middle class family where her father was also a doctor. She ends up running a free hospital in the East End where she encounters prejudice from not only her staff but also the poor who utilize the clinic. She ends up falling in love with an Irish doctor who marries someone else, when he goes to America.

This series was wonderful for depicting what it was like for a woman not only to get a medical degree but also to set up a practice. I found it much more interesting than Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman, and not just because I'm not a huge Jane Seymour fan. Eleanor has to deal with men who don't like the fact that she's not only a competent doctor but also might be better than they are. Even her father is not always as supportive as she would like. She also has to deal with the prejudices of women, like Nurse Carr, who has never worked with a woman doctor and who might have wanted to be a doctor herself. Also the fact that Eleanor is upper middle class when women of the era were only raised to be wives and mothers, not to work.

I would love to read an American version of Bramwell, one that's not a mystery series like Victoria Thompson's wonderful books. I actually love reading historicals where the women break out of the confines and actually have careers whether through necessity or because they want something more than just being decorative. If I read the back cover of a historical and discover that the heroine wants to be an architect or a lawyer, I'm totally there. Millie Criswell wrote a historical that had a lawyer heroine.

Anyone else out there like historicals where the heroine is pursuing a career?

EKM