(Author)ity abroad: The life writing of colonial nurses

Women employed by the CNA drew upon traditional forms of colonial rhetoric in depicting their experiences, but also adapted these forms in order to reflect their own personal and professional experiences as nurses abroad. Many CNA nurses embraced adventure, independence and professional and physical challenges. For these traits to be accepted and celebrated within the late nineteenth and early twentieth century cultural imagination indicates that the CNA nurse may have revised concepts of female propriety in her own time, which may cause us to question some of our current assumptions about historical gender roles.