Mythic Women in Victorian England: Cassandra and Florence Nightingale

Abstract

[Abstract] This paper seeks to examine the transmission of Cassandra in Victorian England as a prelude to subsequent reworkings that consider the myth the epitome of the silenced discourse of women. Florence Nightingale’s relation to the Cassandra myth both in her personal life and in her essay Cassandra (1852) configures the heroine as a model to the vindication of the rights of women. Modern constructions of the myth read it as an archetype of the appropriation of the patriarchal discourse by gender minorities.