Document Type

Article

Publication Date

Spring 2021

Journal Title

The Journal of San Diego History

Volume Number

67

Issue Number

1

First Page

23

Last Page

46

Version

Publisher PDF: the final published version of the article, with professional formatting and typesetting

Disciplines

Alternative and Complementary Medicine | European History | History | Modern Literature | Other Medicine and Health Sciences | United States History | Women's History | Women's Studies

Abstract

In the late nineteenth-century, health tourists travelled the globe in search of relief for tuberculosis, rheumatoid arthritis, and other ailments for which the medical profession had no cure. Some sought the mountain air of the Swiss Alps while others headed to the French and Italian Riviera. A smaller, more eclectic group made their way to San Diego, an up-and-coming tourist destination that promised plenty of sunshine, fresh air, and a mild, dry climate thought to be well-suited to damaged lungs and aching joints. Among them was the best-selling British novelist Beatrice Harraden who wrote several books about Southern California, including Two Health Seekers in Southern California (1897) co-authored with Dr. William A. Edwards. This paper looks at Beatrice Harraden’s health tourism as a form of secular pilgrimage undertaken, in the 1890s, by a single woman who identified as a feminist.It explores what ill health meant to Harraden whose identity as a “New Woman” was bound up in her work as an author and activist. It looks at her recommendations to like-minded women and considers her fictional characters, both invalids and caretakers. Finally, the paper reveals how Harraden used her experience in Southern California to criticize the social conventions that kept British women, in particular, from achieving personal autonomy.

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