What is the author's tone in the biography, The Doctors Blackwell?

The book’s tone balances between emotional investment and academic detachment, for while the book strives to make an emotional connection between the reader and the subjects, the book also encourages the reader to consider its ideas with critical agency. In other words, while the book strives to celebrate the determination and legacy of the Blackwells, the book also acknowledges that no one’s story is without complication and nuance. Regardless, the book is laudatory regarding the overall intent and effect of the Blackwells’ actions, which contributed to the advancement of women’s inclusion in medical fields.

As a counterpoint to these laudatory elements, the book also highlights views held by the Blackwells that do not necessarily gel with modern progressive views. For example, Elizabeth Blackwell disapproved of the women’s rights movements of the time. She believed that, instead of directly petitioning for gender equality, women should focus instead on proving their worth through work, education, and self-improvement. These views are problematic in that they essentially excuse men’s roles in perpetuating oppression of women. However, readers can still be sympathetic to the ways in which Elizabeth arrived at these (fairly problematic) views: “Her aim was towards a loftier, sexless ideal: ‘The great object of education has nothing to do with woman’s rights, or man’s rights, but with the development of the human soul’” (126).