TheMaterialismofBiologicalEncounters 75
femalepersonfromthelowerandthemiddleclassesworkingawayfrom
homeandparentalguardianshipinfactoriesoroffices.Thisnewgender
script provided occasion also for new cultural anxieties, anxieties that
form the backdrop for Theodore Dreiser's Sister Carrie (1900) or
Stephen Crane'sMaggie: A Girl in the Streets(1893). It is the setting
also for the contemporary reaction to "Typhoid Mary." The anxieties
aggregating in many quarters of U.S. society at that time around this
historically new type of person were caused by a novel combination of
(female)personalmobilityandthedemandsofcapitalism.Thepresence
of young unmarried women at the workplace made possible encounters
between men and women in which the biology of human bodies played
another, this time a sexualized, role. Encounters outside the bonds of
marriage were not only regarded as morally dubious but could on
occasion also be encounters with sexually transmitted diseases (STDs),
and were for this reason also a major concern for first-wave feminism.
Even though she was not charged with this form of biological
culpability, Mary Mallon's case nonetheless gave rise to a new form of
biopolitics: her "excessively present feminine body" (Bronfen 81)
produced fears which, while represented as medical or biological, were
at the same time and more importantly social and cultural: fears of
uncontrollablegenderedmobility.Againstthisbackground,bacteriology
and public health provided a formidable, unassailable (because
scientific) vocabulary directed against women's emancipation from the
normative requirements of the "cult of domesticity" (Barbara Welter).
This side of the Mallon case is a good example of the imaginative
surplusgeneratedbyconjuncturesofbiologyandmobility.
Ever since she was first suspected of being the carrier of an
infectious disease, Mary Mallon's life was one of "public intimacy," as
Berlantdescribesit(QueenofAmerica1etpassim).Thatthisshouldbe
so was not co-incidental. To the contrary: in the debate about public
health both Mallon and health officials sought to make her life and the
hidden secrets of her body unabashedly public, for example by getting
the media involved in the debate about how to treat her. For the
fledglingPublicHealthbureaucracywithitsuncertainbudgetprospects,
the "Typhoid Mary" case was a boon occasion to demonstrate its