Genre:

Short Fiction, Serial

Subjects:

Medical Practitioners, Status, Education, Nomenclature, Class

    The proposed marriage of the country doctor James Rich and the society beauty Horatia Berners is greeted with concern by their friends and relatives. Horatia's aunt, Lady Winston, exclaims, 'He is not an M.D. though he calls himself a doctor. [...] These sort of people must be kept down' (372). Dr. Rich 'had been a surgeon on board ship, he had been to India and back [...] he had been at death's door once or twice', and 'If years and experience; if rubbing up against people of every degree, from savages without any clothes at all, to lords and ladies in silken gear; if a good heart, if good wit, and good education do not make a gentleman after twoscore years, it is hard to say what will' (374). He nevertheless tells his future spouse that as a country doctor's wife 'you will have to be really a woman of the working classes' (383).

Reprinted:

Ritchie 1869