Lytton Strachey, "Florence Nightingale" from Eminent Victorians

1. Against what background and set of assumptions about Florence Nightingale's role in the Crimea is this essay written? Why do you think Nightingale was chosen as his only female "eminent Victorian"?
2. What are some features of Strachey's style? What are its desirable or undesirable features?
3. Are Strachey's points added by irony? How does Strachey obtain some of his humorous effects?
4. How does Strachey respond to what he perceives as overintense or neurotic features of Florence Nightingale's behavior?
5. Is the use of metaphor important to Strachey's effects? What are some examples of this trait?
6. What are the chief objects of Strachey's iconoclasm within this essay? To what extent is his attitude toward Florence Nightingale sympathetic? For what does he condemn her? What is his final assessment of her life?
7. What methods does he use to build sympathy for Nightingale?
8. In his preface, what does Strachey claim are his goals in writing Eminent Victorians? Do you believe he accomplishes his goals here?
9. How does Strachey treat the question of Nightingale's response to sexuality and marriage? Later biographers such as Woodhull and Pickering have suggested that she may have had lesbian impluses--is this a line of thought which interests Strachey, himself homosexual?
10. What seems to be Strachey's view of religion, and how does this affect the essay?
11. Are there places in the essay in which Strachey seems to imply a reversal of conventional sex roles? If so, what is Strachey's attitude toward this?
12. How might one explain Florence Nightingale's anger at the alleged fickleness of her own sex?
13. Does Strachey antiicpate later biographers' interpretation of her illnesses as at least in part psycho-neurotic?
14. Is Strachey fair and accurate in attacking Nightingale for a lack of skill at generalization and lack of scientific knowledge?
15. Does he give conviing evidence of her final decline into benevotlent senility?
16. How does the essay end, and what point does this reinforce?
17. Do you think this is a well-written biographical sketch? How does it differ in manner and tone from conventional Victorian biography? What are the merits of these radical departures?
18. How might one mount a defence of Florence Nightingale's life and character? Why sorts of information or evidence might help in this case?
19. Lytton Strachey was born into an eminent intellectual family, and his mother, one of his sisters and a sister-in-law were active in promoting women's suffrage and other feminist causes. What effect do you think his background and associations may have had on his assessments of Nightingale's views and character?