Looking Closely: Material and Visual Approaches to the Nurse’s Uniform

I start by looking at a rare and remarkably complete uniform that belonged to Edna Muir while she was a student at Montreal's Western Hospital School for Nurses in 1917 (Figures 1 and 2). Her ankle-length dress buttons up center-front, with long sleeves and V-neck. The fabric is blue cotton, soft from repeated washing, and printed with the entwined initials of the hospital-WHM. Let us follow Miss Muir as she dons her uniform. First she inserts the heavily starched collar carefully into the neckline of the dress. She reaches behind her neck to attach the collar to the back of the dress with a stud. She also studs the tabs together at the front of the collar, but this is not sufficient to keep the collar in place, so she draws long tapes attached to the collar tabs over her bosom and ties them at the back of her waist. No matter how carefully it is placed, the starched collar is going to chafe her neck. Next she puts on her cumbersome bib, with shoulder straps that cross over the back, secured with pins to a separate waistband underneath her apron. The center front of the bib is pleated at the top and held in place with a pin. Her dress is worn thin around the shoulders from the rubbing of the starched bib. Miss Muir will now have to stand erect lest she crease the bib! Next, she puts on her apron, attached with a stud at the back, then her starched cuffs, closed with studs, and finally, her cap, the crown of which she has carefully folded into box pleats and sewn into place. The brim at the back is worn, patched, and full of pin marks where she has inserted hat pins to keep her cap on her head. Now let us look at the photographic portrait of Miss Muir. Her hair is neatly parted in the middle and pulled over her ears into a bun at the back. Her spectacles and expression give her a serious and demure demeanor. Her uniform is immaculate and precisely arranged. Her stiff bib stands out from her upper body and her rounded cap sticks up above her head. Taken together, this object and image form a discourse about nursing in the early twentieth century. Nursing uniforms were practical, symbolic, and active in creating patterns of behavior, attitudes, and values that defined generations of nurses for just over one hundred years. The uniform was a major strategy in introducing nursing reform and also in creating a strong sense of identity for hundreds of thousands of women. I am fascinated with this remarkable outfit. For those of us born before nurses began to don scrubs, this was just how they looked; the look was naturalized, not questioned. Yet the combination of soft dress, cardboard-stiff overgarments, and pop-up cap is perplexing: How did it come to be? My study of this integral aspect of nursing combines contextual information on the history of nursing with my long interest in dress to write a cultural history of the nurse's uniform. The purpose of this article, however, is not primarily to present the results of my research but rather to explore the methodology I have found useful, with emphasis on rich visual and material evidence for our understanding of labor, social, and women's history, in particular that of a significant female occupational group. This article presents my interpretation of the uniform using an analogy to the photographic process. When you take a photograph, you frame your subject (the nurse's uniform); you focus the lens (your questions); you decide on depth of field (moving back and forth from the artifact to the historical context); you search for the best exposure (uncovering meanings); and finally, you develop the film (the whole picture). Very little was written explicitly about the nurse's uniform during its formative period. Therefore, photographs and artifacts are the salient sources. They are powerful conduits to assumptions and beliefs that are so taken-forgranted that they are not expressed in words. Images of graduating nurses are compelling; they bring us face to face with the experience of nurse training. …

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