Frailty in older people is a challenge for governments, policy makers and healthcare professionals. It decreases quality of life (QoL) in older people, particularly those in nursing home settings. By adopting exploratory qualitative design with focus group interviews, this study aimed to explore perception of QoL in Chinese nursing home residents with frailty to inform nursing care strategies for improving the QoL of Chinese nursing home residents with frailty. Twenty-four Chinese nursing home residents with the frailty scores of 2 or above and at least 18 in the Mini Mental State Examination formed four focus groups to share their views on QoL. Analyzed by qualitative content analysis, the focus group data identified five themes -physical well-being to maximize independence in self-care, peace of mind to cope with irreversible impairment, connection to society, fulfillment of basic needs, and harmony in interpersonal relationships -and four sub-themes.
Perhaps the most memorable—and almost certainly the most harrowing—portions of Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin occur during Tom’s time at the Legree plantation: a narrative plunge into the horrors of slavery in the Deep South, and a stylistic plunge into the realm of the Gothic. This study seeks to engage this section of Uncle Tom’s Cabin within the context of the Gothic genre, and, in so doing, reveal Stowe’s Gothic turn to be not, as some scholars have suggested, merely superficial appropriation, but rather a sophisticated manipulation of genre that culminates in a Christianization of the Gothic. By exploring Stowe’s use of Gothic figures and devices—the setting of the crumbling Louisiana plantation, the threefold Gothic female represented by Cassy, and the “haunting” of Legree—in the light of both European and American Gothic fiction, this study demonstrates how the trappings of the Gothic genre can be used to refresh and further Stowe’s progressive Christian narrative, one which ultimately refutes the Gothic by seeding it in a universe where peace, freedom, and Christian redemption are possible. This article is published as part of a collection on Gothic and horror.
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