Title: Quarantine and Cleaning: Deerbrook and the Medical Reconstruction of Community in the Early Victorian Age

Abstract: As a daring endeavor taken by Harriet Martineau in the fiction realm, Deerbrook reveals the important role of medicine within community in the early Victorian age. Previous studies have focused either on the moral character of the doctor and its function in maintaining the order of the community, or the medical discourse and its discipline’s impact on individual patients. Few, nonetheless, have been interested in the relationship between medicine and community. Focusing on the health of the community, this paper first attempts to illustrate the significance of the doctor and his medical discourse in shaping social health in the early Victorian age, meanwhile presenting Martineau’s reference to related medical themes in Deerbrook. Then by analyzing the two plague scenes on spiritual and physical levels and demonstrating the different methods Mr. Hope adopts to tackle the plagues, i.e., quarantine and cleaning, thus revealing his medical reconstruction of the community and his leading role within the community.

Keywords: Deerbrook, quarantine, cleaning, medical reconstruction, community

Author: Fang Liu, Ph.D. Candidate, School of Foreign Languages, Peking University, Beijing, China.