If in Howells's and Harper's fiction doctors successfully arbitrate racial and gender maladies, in Kate Chopin's The Awakening (1899) Edna Pontellier's Dr. Mandelet is unable to either correctly diagnose or treat her “morbid condition.” Her white Creole husband thinks the fact that she is “not like herself” (117) has something vaguely to do with the “eternal rights of women” (118) even though she is not associating with what the doctor refers to as that circle of “pseudo-intellectual women” (118). Because she “lets the housekeeping go to the dickens” (117), finds weddings “one of the most lamentable spectacles on earth,” and refuses him in bed (“you understand – we meet in the morning at the breakfast table” [118]), Mr. Pontellier thinks the problem is generally of a gynecological nature. The “semi-retired physician,” most often sought for consultation for his “wisdom” than for his “skills” (116–17) concurs.