Butcher: A Novel

Red-Handed Butcher
Butcher: A Novel
First edition
AuthorJoyce Carol Oates
LanguageEnglish
PublisherAlfred A. Knopf
Publication date
2024
Publication placeUnited States
Media typePrint (hardback)
Pages333
ISBN978-0-593-53777-0

Butcher: A Novel is a historical novel by Joyce Carol Oates published in 2024 by Alfred A. Knopf.

The gothic genre work is a fictional rendering of the medical careers of three professionals educated and practicing medicine in the 19th century.[1] These are J. Marion Sims, M.D., Silas Weir Mitchell, M. D., and Henry Cotton, M. D., notable researchers and practitioners in, respectively, gynecology, neurology, and psychology.[2][3]

Contents

Dedication
Epigraph
Editor’s Note
Prologue
Part I: Young Doctor Weir Editor’s Note

  • Exile: Morris County, New Jersey—1837
  • The Hermitage, Ho-Ho-Kus, New Jersey—1839
  • Early Years as a Practitioner—1846-1851
  • Summons to Trenton—1851

Part II: New Jersey State Asylum for Female Lunatics

  • Destiny
  • The Vow
  • Fistula
  • Miracle (March 11, 1852)
  • Miracle (Postscript)
  • Misfortune
  • Reversal of Fortune

Part III: The Pioneer Reformer

  • Sacred Monomania
  • Esther C__
  • Christian Burial
  • The Chair of Tranquility
  • Halcyon Years
  • The Humbling
  • Slander
  • Nurse-Assistant
  • The Laboratory: The Experiment
  • Fever
  • Day of Triumph
  • The Gift

Part IV: Red-Handed Butcher

  • God’s Chosen
  • Wilhelmina S__: The Twins
  • “Spare the Rod, Spoil the Child…”
  • The Penitent
  • God’s Blessing, God’s Wrath.

Part V: The Insurrection

  • Lost Girl, Found: An Orphan’s True Story Told by Herself

Part VI: Epilogue: Afterlife

  • The Promise
  • The Pledge

Reception

Publishers Weekly writes: “Oates’s scathing indictment of the physical and psychological treatment of women by the medical establishment makes for compulsive but challenging reading. Unlike the ghastly procedures depicted, Oates’s inventive Gothic novel pays off.”[4]

Eric K. Anderson at LonesomeReader Blog calls Butcher “an arresting, horrifying and impactful novel” in which Oates exposes “how misogyny is built into the medical profession leading to a near total ignorance about how the human body actually works.”[5]

Commenting on Oates’s productivity as a writer—“almost compulsive, verging on the hypergraphic”—critic Daphne Merkin praises Butcher for its “feverish energy, narrative propulsion and descriptive amplitude—sometimes to excess—of much of her earlier work.”

In a positive review, Kirkus Reviews called the novel "Vintage Oates: splendidly written, and a useful warning to choose your doctors wisely."[6]

Footnotes

  1. ^ Merkin, 2024: “Through the lens of a 19th-century doctor, Joyce Carol Oates explores gothic medical horror.”
  2. ^ Oates, 2024: Acknowledgments, after p. 332
  3. ^ Anderson, 2024: “The novel is a fictional biography…”
  4. ^ "Review: Butcher". Publishers Weekly.
  5. ^ Anderson, 2024: “[A] striking representation of a misogynistic mind which is motivated more by self-belief and personal gain than caring for patients.”
  6. ^ "Butcher". Kirkus Reviews. February 17, 2024. Retrieved June 30, 2025.

Sources

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