Illness in victorian literature Nov 13, 2021 · In the nineteenth century, the discussion of personal health and wellbeing became almost a national pastime. Peterson explores the condition, what it meant for Victorians, and how to read it today. ” Charles Dickens “achieved an almost matchless status as a definer of medical Jan 30, 2023 · Medical literature depicted womanhood as a perpetual state of ill health. Overview of Victorian Attitudes towards Mental Illness: The paper provides an overview of prevailing attitudes towards mental illness in Victorian society, highlighting the stigmatization, medicalization, and institutionalization of individuals with mental health disorders during this period. The theory and treatment of mental illness in … KeyWords: Mental Health, Mental Illness, Women, Literature, Fiction, 19th Century Acknowledgements I would like to thank my faculty mentor Dr. Audrey C. This May 9, 2020 · Tuberculosis peaked in the 19th and 20th century that led to some surprisingly beautiful art despite how gruesome the disease was. 00 Paperback + Drawing on the recent academic interest in approaching health and wellbeing from a humanities perspective, Sensation Novels and Domestic Minds investigates how the Victorians dealt with questions of mental health by examining literary works in the genre of sensation fiction. May 13, 2021 · Amazon. Wilkie Collins was one of the two most prolific producers of disabled characters in Victorian literature, along with his friend, colleague, collaborator, and competitor Charles Dickens. Sensation Novels and Domestic Minds Drawing on the recent academic interest in approaching health and well- being from a humanities perspective, Sensation Novels and Domestic Minds investigates how the Victorians dealt with questions of mental health by examining literary works in the genre of sensation fiction. Out of His Mind interrogates how Victorians made sense ofthe madman as both a social reality and a cultural representation. ^ Sontag, Susan (1978). Not very many decades ago, work on the Victorian ‘cultural context of medicine’ ushered in studies of germ theory and Middlemarch, the medicalization of female hysteria and the influence of Darwinian evolution on the novels of Thomas Hardy. Moreover, even when the characters in this novel are not actually ill, they may be bone tired, weak, involved in Apr 15, 2021 · Neo-Victorian Madness: Rediagnosing Nineteenth-Century Mental Illness in Literature and Other Media (2020), ed. Even at the height of enthusiasm for Jan 27, 2025 · Medical Care Medical Developments Victorian Hospitals Recent Dissertations on Women's History and Health Care Medicine and Public Health in Victorian Literature and the Arts Nineteenth-Century British Medicine: Suggested Reading Medical Technology Contraception and birth control in Victorian Britain Victorians and the Discovery of X-rays Dentistry May 3, 2022 · Madness is of course an outdated shorthand term encompassing a variety of mental disorders and illnesses; the knowledge that so many of us are on a spectrum that ranges from mild anxiety to severe psychosis makes the literary portraits of the mentally unwell compelling as well as disconcerting. People with Feb 26, 2024 · Sensation Novels and Domestic Minds: Mental Health in Victorian Literature (Routledge Studies in Literature and Health Humanities) - Kindle edition by Vialard, Mathilde. Thorne in Antony Trollope's novel of the same name Review of Hosanna Krienke Dec 26, 2020 · Literature Dr. Mental Health in Victorian Literature | Find, read and cite all the research you need Somatic Fictions Imagining Illness In Victorian Culture: Somatic Fictions Athena Vrettos,1995 This book focuses on the centrality of illness particularly psychosomatic illness as an imaginative construct in Victorian culture It shows how illness shaped the terms through which people perceived relationships between body and mind self and other private and public and how Victorians tried to This book considers the different mental illnesses the characters of sensation novels develop inside and outside the home as they struggle to define their own identity against Victorian social expectations. Her research reveals the plight of women incarcerated in 19th century asylums, how they became Victorian Web (Elegant web-based hypertext on Victorian literature and culture, covering topics such as Social Context, Economics, Science, Technology, Politics, Literature, and the Visual Arts. Dec 26, 2020 · Literature Dr. Jan 1, 1994 · In this exploration of the significance of illness in the Victorian literary imagination Miriam Bailin maps the cultural implications and narrative effects of the sickroom as an important symbolic space in nineteenth-century life and literature. The Feb 16, 2025 · Discover how classic literature portrays mental health, from depression to addiction, and its impact on society's understanding of psychological conditions. British Society for Literature and Science. Use features like bookmarks, note taking and highlighting while reading Sensation Novels and Domestic Minds: Mental Health in Victorian Literature DSpace - researchcommons. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-1-107-67280-2. Mar 12, 2017 · Victorian Literature is rife with female characters who suffer, or at least appear to suffer, from a variety of mental illnesses. "Attics are where wives who cannot be contained, who are over-sexualised and unruly are stored away," says writer and psychotherapist, Adam Phillips. The general perspective of mental health was rather poor and ill-favored towards those who struggled with mental illness. Mental The Victorian attitude towards health was largely responsible for the increase in medical developments during the early 19th century. The 1800s saw a period of significant change, marked by the Industrial Revolution, urbanization, and rapid societal transformation. The condition of Hysteria and other related illnesses was specifically gendered as a female affliction, literally stemming from the womb and thus contemporary medical science methods of treating such disorders were focused on repressing… The Yellow Wallpaper is a powerful work of literature that highlights the subjugation of women and the issues they faced during the 19th century. The novels of Mary Elizabeth Braddon and Wilkie Collins, two prominent writers of Feb 26, 2024 · Drawing on the recent academic interest in approaching health and wellbeing from a humanities perspective, Sensation Novels and Domestic Minds investigates how the Victorians dealt with questions of mental health by examining literary works in the genre of sensation fiction. Nov 12, 2020 · This is one of many vivid accounts of female insanity, reconstructed from nineteenth-century asylum case records in England and Ireland, that Diana Peschier tells in her book Lost Souls. Oct 1, 2019 · Articulating Bodies investigates the contemporaneous developments of Victorian fiction and disability’s medicalization by focusing on the intersection between narrative form and body. While earlier epistemologies of In the introduction of Narrating Trauma: Victorian Novels and Modern Stress Disorders, Gretchen Braun makes two assertions: readers will better understand Victorian literature if they comprehend how people described pain and illness in the nineteenth century, and our current understanding of psychic illness can be informed by Victorian beliefs about the emerging field of psychology (1). Mar 18, 2014 · In an article aimed at diagnosing the mysterious illnesses afflicting nineteenth-century literary heroines, for instance, author Vivienne Parry cites Dr. The terminology is romanticized in Victorian literature, where it typically describes a potentially life-threatening This dissertation, A Psychoanalytical Reading of Female Madness in Selected Victorian Literature, argues that the patriarchal Victorian society, gave meaning to female madness using medical and psychological discourses. How — or is — the Victorian preoccupation with health and the body reflected in literature? Is there an increasing sense of bodily self-consciousness in the writing of that time? At the London Asylum, Dr. Dec 19, 2024 · Modern medicine has enabled citizens of wealthy, industrialized nations to forget that children once routinely died in shocking numbers. May 28, 2025 · This article will examine the ways in which Victorian literature reflects and shapes our understanding of health and illness during the 19th century, with a focus on the representation of epidemic diseases, mental illness, and public health reform. Following their lead, the authors of Neo-Victorian Madness have purposed to increase literary scholarship by scrutinising neo-Victorian perspectives in literature, television and film on mental illness. In ‘The Most May 25, 2023 · Illness in twentieth-century literature In the twentieth century, attitudes toward mental illness in literature began to change. On the basis of these accounts, as well as depictions of insanity in Victorian literature, she argues convincingly that religion was a central component of many women’s experiences of madness; at a time when Feb 22, 2018 · This entry is designed to outline the changing experiences of embodiment in the Victorian period and is therefore divided into the following sections: anatomy, gender, femininity, masculinity, health and sickness, industrialized and technologized bodies, physiology and reading, evolution and race, disability, adolescence, and old age. The Victorians loved stashing mad women up in towers or attics, where they could slow-w-wly peel the wallpaper from the walls or moan and Feb 9, 2024 · Medicine and Public Health in Victorian Literature and the Arts Amateur Doctors and Patent Medicines Disability and Disability Studies "Language Is Our Rubicon": A Review of Jennifer Esmail's Reading Victorian Deafness Dangerous Occupations Robbed of “twenty-five years of existence” — Sheffield’s cutlery damages worker's health Gothic literature featured archetypes like the tormented madwoman and the haunted recluse, often reinforcing societal stereotypes about mental illness. The Digital and eTextbook ISBNs for Sensation Novels and Domestic Minds are 9781003845348, 1003845347 and the print ISBNs are 9781032058641, 1032058641. , reviewing Byrne, Katherine (2011). ” Such portraits demand a “rediagnosing” of mental illness that was often reduced to only Brain fever (or cerebral fever) is an outdated medical term that was used as a synonym for phrensy, beginning in early 19th century medical literature. Things were different in the nineteenth century, however, as Hosanna Krienke demonstrates in Convalescence in the Nineteenth-Century Novel: The Afterlife of Victorian Illness, a recent instalment in the Cambridge Studies in Nineteenth-Century Literature and Culture series. In a wide variety of texts ranging from social reform writing to autobiographies, from novels to poetry, physical suffering was often closely associated with a specific cultural form of affect called sympathy. Feb 26, 2024 · Sensation Novels and Domestic Minds investigates how the Victorians dealt with questions of mental health by examining literary works in the genre of sensation fiction. The novels of Mary Elizabeth Braddon and Wilkie Collins, two prominent writers of the genre, often portray characters Popular fiction in mid-Victorian Britain was regarded as both feminine and diseased. Anne Reus Neo-Victorian Madness begins by positing a fundamental continuity between the Victorians and us. Maurice Bucke used controversial surgical procedures on LAI patients to establish himself as a leader in Canadian gynaecology. Drawing on the recent academic interest in approaching health and wellbeing from a humanities perspective, Sensation Novels and Domestic Minds investigates how the Victorians dealt with questions of mental health by examining literary works in the genre of sensation fiction. But what was life really like inside Britain‘s 19th century mental hospitals? While treatment of mentally ill people in the Victorian era was far from ideal Jun 1, 2020 · Neo-Victorian Madness: Rediagnosing Nineteenth-Century Mental Illness in Literature and Other Media investigates contemporary fiction, cinema and television shows set in the Victorian period that depict mad murderers, lunatic doctors, social dis/ease and madhouses as if many Victorians were “mad. Aug 8, 2011 · Tuberculosis and the Victorian Literary Imagination helpfully supplies at least part of the map of Victorian representations of literature and consumption, with a little fine art thrown in for good measure. Apr 29, 2014 · A book giving an insight into the lives of people confined to asylums in Victorian times is one of six books shortlisted for a prize for health and medicine in literature. Through our analysis of the long nineteenth century, we hope to illuminate our own contagious transformations. Nov 8, 2024 · Victorian England’s fascination with blood symbolized both life and corruption, merging medical science with Gothic horror. Novels Show the Fragility of Health Between 40% and 50% of children didn’t live past 5 in the US during the 19th century. Apr 20, 2021 · In literature, authors choose each illness they write about very carefully. Dec 30, 2024 · This article delves into how Victorian literature mirrors the health concerns of its era and connects them to present-day discussions, highlighting the ongoing relevance of historical perspectives in addressing modern health issues. Post 1930, mention of the disease started to diminish in medical literature and now the term is only used when describing a temporary loss of control over one’s emotions. Depicting the cruelty of diseases largely unfamiliar today, they also warn against being lulled into thinking that child deaths Jul 27, 2021 · This thesis attempts to prove that the diagnosing and treatment of mental illness in Victorian Anglo-American literature was heavily gendered and therefore misogynistic. Literary critics thought of Health when they read a new book of poems; social theorists thought of Health when they read a new book of poems; social theorists thought of Health when they envisioned an ideal society. In the introduction of Narrating Trauma: Victorian Novels and Modern Stress Disorders, Gretchen Braun makes two assertions: readers will better understand Victorian literature if they comprehend how people described pain and illness in the nineteenth century, and our current understanding of psychic illness can be informed by Victorian beliefs about the emerging field of psychology (1). At the time, such interdisciplinary pairings were revolutionary; they forged access roads across the ‘two culture’ divide, made famous by C. In the face of a hectic modern existence, nineteenth-century thinkers argued that all medical In this exploration of the significance of illness in the Victorian literary imagination Miriam Bailin maps the cultural implications and narrative effects of the sickroom as an important symbolic space in nineteenth-century life and literature. These shifts influenced how mental health was perceived, as the urban environment and the complexities of modern life were The portrayal of mental health in 19th-century Gothic literature was deeply intertwined with the cultural and historical context of the time. ” Such portraits demand a “rediagnosing” of mental illness that was often reduced to only Oct 11, 2022 · The 19th century was a period of both innovation and devastation in the public sphere of health and hygiene. Victorians worshiped the goddess Hygeia, sought out her laws, and disciplined themselves to obey them. ‘And we will pass hours and hours eve Although characters portrayed with mental illness have progressed from the Victorian era, more novels with believable and real protagonists need to be authored, says writer, poet and activist Jhilmil Breckenridge. I would also like to thank my friends and family who have supported me while writing and presenting my thesis. Feb 9, 2021 · He is a specialist in Victorian and early-twentieth century literature, with particular interests in music, the senses, theories of embodiment and queer theory. Dr Bailin draws on non-fictional accounts of illness by Julia Stephen, Harriet Martineau and others to illuminate the presentation of illness and Feb 28, 2017 · Introduction Death was a familiar part of life in the Victorian age. Sep 22, 2021 · Because of the role public health played in efforts to control or limit contagion, many scholarly considerations of Victorian contagion focus on surveillance and control of human bodies enacted by public health projects. Indeed, Miriam Bailin counts "twelve pivotal illnesses" in it, and suggests that this is probably "the upper limit" of the Victorian author's inclusion of such episodes in a narrative (5). This intimacy with death had a profound effect on the cultural imagination . Dec 11, 2024 · Victorian novels chronicle the terrible grief of losing children. Victorians believed that studying the physiology of the body, its internal organs and how they were connected to the whole body, was an important concept in understanding the physiological man (Victorian Web). John, alias Graham Bretton, in Brontë Villette Poetry and Medicine: W. Maintained by George P. Dr Bailin draws on non-fictional accounts of illness by Julia Stephen, Harriet Martineau and others to illuminate the presentation of illness and Although scenes of illness and convalescence serve a reconciliatory purpose in works by Victorian men as well as women, including the modification of narrowly defined gender roles, the kind of The profuse illness and nursing narratives in Victorian texts frequently feature sympathy for physical suffering as a major cultural and literary trope. Jan 18, 2025 · Illness loomed large in the Victorian period, and in this day school leading scholars on the topic will introduce you to important ways in which it was a central preoccupation of Victorian literature. May 28, 2025 · Uncovering Public Health in Victorian Literature The Victorian era, spanning from the late 1830s to the early 1900s, was a time of significant social, economic, and cultural change in England. Infant mortality remained high throughout the 19th century and it was only in the late Victorian period that public health reforms and medical advances caused life expectancy to rise, gradually establishing the now common pattern of death in old age. As the Industrial Revolution took hold, urban centers grew, and with them, new public health challenges emerged. Gone was the madwoman in the attic and the Romantic woman sighing over lost loves – twentieth-century authors (and society) understood ‘madness’ very differently. Dr Bailin draws on non-fictional accounts of illness by Julia Stephen, Harriet Martineau and others to illuminate the presentation of illness and Sensation Novels and Domestic Minds investigates how the Victorians dealt with questions of mental health by examining literary works in the genre of sensation fiction. Jan 1, 2025 · PDF | On Jan 1, 2025, Stéphanie Richet-Drouet published Mathilde Vialard,Sensation Novels and Domestic Minds. The 19th century saw fundamental changes in society's response to the mentally ill with the creation of purpose-built asylums throughout the country. During this time, the average life expectancy for the middle-class man was 45 years, and half as long for workmen and laborers. Such factors of asylum chaperonage, restriction of movement, limited occupation, sexlessness, and constant subjugation to authority were "normal" lives of women than of men. The portrayal of mental health in 19th-century Gothic literature was deeply intertwined with the cultural and historical context of the time. However, the genre didn’t truly take off until the Victorian Dec 11, 2024 · Infectious Diseases Killed Victorian Children at Alarming Rates. Maier and Brenda Ayres. Fiction of this period reveals a cultural ambivalence: while certain texts appeared to reinforce medicalized views of mental illness, others exposed the biases and inconsistencies in these frameworks. An investigation into the conditions of mental institutions during the Victorian era reflect that although poor and abusive conditions and May 26, 2024 · Introduction In the popular imagination, the Victorian lunatic asylum is a nightmarish place of cruelty and suffering. To do so, four characters will be studied: Lady Audley in Mary Elizabeth Braddon’s Lady Audley’s Secret, the unnamed female narrator in Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s The Yellow Wallpaper, Edna Pontellier in Kate Chopin’s Apr 18, 2010 · Notions of female insanity in the 1850s included "unrestrained behaviour," often merely Victorian-speak for female sexuality. Tuberculosis and the Victorian Literary Imagination. Home | Cambridge University Press & Assessment May 23, 2016 · The disabled body GPL: Jennifer Esmail’s Reading Victorian Deafness: Signs and Sounds in Victorian Literature and Culture (Athens: Ohio University Press, 2013) and Martha Stoddard Holmes’s Fictions of Affliction: Physical Disability in Victorian Culture (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2009) both reviewed by Diane Greco Josefowicz. Henley's In Hospital Brontë and Nineteenth-Century Views of Blindness and Deafness Lydgate in George Eliot's Middlemarch Allan Woodcourt in Charles Dickens's Bleak House The protagonist of George MacDonald's Robert Falconer Dr. It situates the literature within historical contexts, but primarily focuses on fictional representations of madness. Literature of the time reflects these changes, with many authors incorporating themes The major novelists of the Victorian era enjoyed a large readership amongst the general public. Charlotte Rich for all of her support and guidance during this thesis process. Dec 5, 2023 · Amy Milne-Smith’s contribution to this debate moves beyond a history of men to that of masculinity, combining accounts of men’s experiences of madness and mental health care with social and cultural debates and representations around men’s mental illness. A common feature of the cases in l pressure caused by unexceptional, routine asp ot t Oct 3, 2019 · We would like to show you a description here but the site won’t allow us. At times the fiction studied replicates the dominant attitudes towards mental illness in the period. ” Such portraits demand a “rediagnosing” of mental illness that was often reduced to only This book considers the different mental illnesses the characters of sensation novels develop inside and outside the home as they struggle to define their own identity against Victorian social expectations. Different illnesses and ailments symbolize different things. , £80 (hardback), ISBN: 978-1-789-62495-3 Mar 26, 2018 · The Victorian sciences of the mind, along with the recent critical work on them, extend from psychology into medicine, philosophy, legal studies, the occult, and beyond, with recent contributions to the critical and historical literature too numerous to cover in one review article. With publications such as the British Medical Journal and Lancet freely accessible to the everyday reader, common medical terms and diagnoses were readily absorbed by the public. Out of his mind Masculinity and mental illness in Victorian Britain By Amy Milne-Smith Hardcover - Price: £85. His monograph Music and the Queer Body in English Literature at the Fin de Siècle is forthcoming from Cambridge University Press. The book examines texts from across the century, from Frederic Shoberl’s 1833 English translation of Victor Hugo’s Notre-Dame de Paris (1831) to Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes story Aug 11, 2023 · Literature Criticism: Mistreatment of Women with Mental Illnesses in Victorian Literature Hanna wrote this as a part of her university assignments. P This thesis explores the complex ways in which mental illness was portrayed in Victorian fiction. llness threads its way all through Elizabeth Gaskell's second full-length novel, Ruth (1853). Canvas – Arts: Tuberculosis and Victorian Literature The Guardian – Tuberculosis Thriving In ‘Victorian’ London, Says Expert BBC Culture – The Family Tragedy That Inspired the Brontës’ Greatest Books History of Yesterday – How This 18th Century Disease Shaped Beauty Standards Nov 28, 2019 · How did the Victorians view mental illness? After discovering the case-notes of women in Victorian asylums, Diana Peschier reveals how mental illness was recorded by both medical practitioners and in the popular literature of the era, and why madness became so closely associated with femininity. Victorian physicians stressed the biological differences between man and women to place limitations on women’s demands for serious education and competitive vocations. The novels of Mary Elizabeth Braddon and Wilkie Collins, two prominent writers of the genre, often portray characters Feb 26, 2024 · Drawing on the recent academic interest in approaching health and wellbeing from a humanities perspective, Sensation Novels and Domestic Minds investigates how the Victorians dealt with questions of mental health by examining literary works in the genre of sensation fiction. "Reviews, Romantic and Victorian: Byrne, Katherine, Tuberculosis and the Victorian Literary Imagination". Supposedly the brain becomes inflamed and causes a variety of symptoms, most notably mental confusion, and can lead to death. Language and Literature and History of Art at the University of Victorian literature is rife with scenes of madness, with mental disorder functioning as everything from a simple plot device to a commentary on the foundations of Victorian society. E. Feb 26, 2024 · Drawing on the recent academic interest in approaching health and wellbeing from a humanities perspective, Sensation Novels and Domestic Minds investigates how the Victorians dealt with questions of mental health by examining literary works in the Drawing on the recent academic interest in approaching health and wellbeing from a humanities perspective, Sensation Novels and Domestic Minds investigates how the Victorians dealt with questions of mental health by examining literary works in the genre of sensation fiction. The novels of Mary Elizabeth Braddon and Wilkie Collins, two prominent writers of the genre, often portray characters Victorian asylum became more overtly benign, protective, todial, it also became an environment grotesquely which women normally functioned. Oct 3, 2017 · This is echoed by Susan Sontag, who wrote in Illness as Metaphor, “once TB was thought to come from too much passion, afflicting the reckless and sensual. Gothic literature and horror films depict terrifying institutions populated by raving madmen and tyrannical doctors. A greater understanding of mental illness as a whole throughout the 20th century and beyond has allowed society to slowly let go of the idea of the hysterical woman. nz DSpace Feb 8, 2021 · xii, 250 pages ; 22 cm Somatic Fictions focuses on the centrality of illness - particularly psychosomatic illness - as an imaginative construct in Victorian culture, emphasizing how it shaped the terms through which people perceived relationships between body and mind, self and other, private and public. What The chapter addresses focalization’s evocation of the perceiving body, linking focalization to theories of staring and the specular in disability studies, and it provides a history of scholarship on Victorian illness and disability, thus placing the book’s argument in the fields of narratology, disability studies, and Victorian studies. The dying child makes a frequent appearance in 19 th -century novels. Victorian literature reflects an increasing willingness to explore the mental state – a willingness that culminated, in the early twentieth century, with the birth of psychology as a field of study and science. ” Unlike other epidemics of the time, many of consumption’s effects were physically flattering, and fit well into existing beauty standards of the Victorian era. Illness as Metaphor. com: Convalescence in the Nineteenth-Century Novel: The Afterlife of Victorian Illness (Cambridge Studies in Nineteenth-Century Literature and Culture, Series Number 129): 9781108844840: Krienke, Hosanna: BooksVictorian Britain witnessed a resurgence of traditional convalescent caregiving. Using modern psychological research on gender-influenced proclivity toward depression as a lens through which to understand 19th century mental health diagnoses, this thesis Aug 3, 2021 · Articulating bodies: the narrative form of disability and illness in Victorian fiction by Kylee-Anne Hingston, Liverpool, Liverpool UP, 2019, 221pp. Five chapters compose this 211pp. Neil Vickers, scholar of literature and medicine. ac. These shifts influenced how mental health was perceived, as the urban environment and the complexities of modern life were May 25, 2021 · By Mary Carpenter IN MY Little Bird’s Part Two look at old diseases, literature of the 18th and 19th centuries begins to include—and sometimes comes up with original names for—these conditions, along with many now-outdated treatments, following their earlier listings in 17th-century “Bills of Mortality. org Oct 23, 2023 · Let us dim the lights and delve into the treatment of mental illness in Victorian horror literature, the portrayal of characters grappling with madness, the rise of asylums, and the changing perceptions of mental health during this period. ) Literary Resources - Victorian British (Easy-to-use list of Victorian web sites. Nov 30, 2019 · Abstract Articulating Bodies investigates the contemporaneous developments of Victorian fiction and disability’s medicalization by focusing on the intersection between narrative form and the body. See full list on victorian-era. The five books I describe reflect the age in which they were written; if mental illness is diagnosed Jun 5, 2019 · The purpose of this thesis was to investigate the impact of sociocultural factors of 19th century domestic gender roles, as they affected women’s mental health specifically in the area of depressive disorders. We would like to show you a description here but the site won’t allow us. Authors documented the common but no less gutting grief of losing a child. While critics and biographers have narrated Collins’s interest in disability as purely personal, the manifestation of his own experiences with chronic illness, or as evidence of his reliance on melodramatic 1876 Victorian England Revisited discusses some of the diseases common in the period. The author uses nineteenth-century fiction, diaries, medical treatises, and health advice May 26, 2024 · Introduction In the popular imagination, the Victorian lunatic asylum is a nightmarish place of cruelty and suffering. “Victorian angst and mental illness” (9) caused by technological and social change, global expansion and changing moral and ethical May 13, 2014 · There is a great tradition of mental illness in fiction. Victorian literature functioned not only as a mirror to these shifting dynamics but also as a critical space for examining, subverting, and reconstructing societal views on madness. waikato. Of course, Our Mutual Friend does not stand alone in Victorian fiction representing the conjoined instability of word and body; indeed, depictions of illnesses, deaths, accidents, and characters with deformities or chronic invalidism are central to a plethora of nineteenth-century novels. Neo-Victorian Madness: Rediagnosing Nineteenth-Century Mental Illness in Literature and Other Media investigates contemporary fiction, cinema and television shows set in the Victorian period that depict mad murderers, lunatic doctors, social dis/ease and madhouses as if many Victorians were “mad. Here, the debt to Michel Foucault will be obvious. The novels of Mary Elizabeth Braddon and Wilkie Collins, two prominent writers of the genre, often portray characters <1>Susan Sontag’s remarkable account of literary and popular representations of tuberculosis and cancer in nineteenth- and twentieth-century Western literature and culture, Illness as Metaphor (1978), has shaped most literary critics’ analyses of the narratives of people afflicted with each of the two then-most prominent diseases of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Critical articles of the time on fiction and on the body and disease offer convincing evidence that reading was metaphorically allied with eating, contagion and sex. Its exploration of mental health, gender roles, and the limitations imposed on women offers valuable insights into the historical context of the time. R. Bucke adopted the popular Victorian idea that the female reproductive organs were connected to emotional and physical well-being, and were thus the most likely cause of mental illness. Departing from critical studies of the numerous representations of hereditary illness in Victorian texts, this thesis focuses primarily on insanity or borderline based largely on subjective exp rather than real or perceived biological determinism. As men occupied almost all positions of power in Victorian Britain, the male body became enshrined as the ideal one to equip someone for such power. The novels of Mary Elizabeth Braddon and Wilkie Collins, two prominent writers of the genre, often portray characters Oct 11, 2022 · Disease is a sign of ill health and in order to treat mental ill health, the Victorian society turned its back on those bearing said 'diseases' the same way you might isolate someone with a fatal physical disease. They dealt with the pressing social issues of the day and their work both reflected and shaped society's attitudes to contemporary problems. In what ways does The Yellow Wallpaper connect with the Victorian era? The Yellow Wallpaper by Feb 9, 2024 · Medicine and Public Health in Victorian Literature and the Arts Amateur Doctors and Patent Medicines Disability and Disability Studies "Language Is Our Rubicon": A Review of Jennifer Esmail's Reading Victorian Deafness Dangerous Occupations Robbed of “twenty-five years of existence” — Sheffield’s cutlery damages worker's health This is an interdisciplinary study involving public health, cultural studies, the history of medicine, literature and the theatre, providing new insights into Victorian culture and society. ” Such portraits demand a “rediagnosing” of mental illness that was often reduced to only Victorian asylum photo Victorian attitudes to madness In the Victorian era, there was a shift in the attitudes towards mental illness and people, at large, began to realize the importance of paying attention to the conditions of mental institutions. Download it once and read it on your Kindle device, PC, phones or tablets. Many children died in infancy due to exposure to toxic substances, disease, accidents, and more, meaning that “nearly one infant in three in England failed Jun 2, 2021 · Neo-Victorian Madness: Rediagnosing Nineteenth-Century Mental Illness in Literature and Other Media investigates contemporary fiction, cinema and television shows set in the Victorian period that depict mad murderers, lunatic doctors, social dis/ease and madhouses as if many Victorians were “mad. Feb 2, 2024 · Influence on Subsequent Portrayals: The paper discusses the influence of Victorian literature on subsequent portrayals of mental illness in literature and popular culture, highlighting themes, tropes, and narrative motifs that continue to shape contemporary perceptions of mental health. Apr 26, 2022 · This Roundtable asks how the Victorians approached contagion, examining the ways in which it became such a central preoccupation for a society already fixated upon health and illness and the transactions between life and death. Characters such as Bertha Mason in 'Jane Eyre' exemplify these archetypes, embodying the marginalization faced by women with mental health challenges. Bloodletting, early transfusions, and vampiric lore underscored anxieties about purity and disease, each teetering between life, death, and the supernatural. Thorne in Antony Trollope's novel of the same name Review of Hosanna Krienke Mar 30, 2017 · These characters were fictitious, and often contracted their fever after experiencing intense emotions, but medical literature of the day shows that such symptoms were recognized as a distinct and very real illness by doctors. Teaching 19th-century English literature, I regularly Dec 11, 2024 · Victorian novels chronicle the terrible grief of losing children. by Sarah E. Sensation Novels and Domestic Minds: Mental Health in Victorian Literature 1st Edition is written by Mathilde Vialard and published by Routledge. I began this investigation of disability and narrative form in Victorian fiction with Notre-Dame de Paris, an early nineteenth-century novel that rarely adopts the perspective of Quasimodo, the disabled character who provides the story’s impetus. essay along with an introduction, a conclusion, a bibliography and an index, according to the following chapter division: 1. Nov 1, 2006 · Abstract Victorian literature is rife with scenes of madness, with mental disorder functioning as everything from a simple plot device to a commentary on the foundations of Victorian society. What This one-day online workshop aims to explore questions such as: How did literature negotiate the relationship between medical science, social reform and public health? What role did medical ethics play in literary explorations of health and illness? In what ways are differences in and access to prevention, diagnostics and treatment reflected in relation to gender, class and race? Which Oct 15, 2017 · Mind the Ghosts: Introductions to Spiritualism and Victorian Psychology Gothic literature began in the mid-eighteenth century with Horace Walpole’s The Castle of Otranto, which is widely considered to the first true work of Gothic fiction (“The Castle of Otranto”). Oct 15, 2013 · Literature from the period reflects the prevalence of children’s deaths in Victorian England. But while madness in Victorian fiction has been much studied, most scholarship has focused on the portrayal of madness in women; male mental disorder in the period has suffered comparative neglect. In particular, the nineteenth century saw the rapid rise of the ‘nervous illness’ – sicknesses which Jun 28, 2024 · Bad or Mad? A Speculative Interpretation of Scrooge’s Mental Illness Bibliography Victorian Literature and Victorian Psychology: Selected Readings Before Freud: Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century Writings about Psychology Classics in the History of Psychology (Canadian site) May 31, 2007 · In this exploration of the significance of illness in the Victorian literary imagination Miriam Bailin maps the cultural implications and narrative effects of the sickroom as an important symbolic space in nineteenth-century life and literature. Landow, Brown University. kqeu elikok zvladf ofeh kdtc cdxvd xevcflp rjr juf gpis triflgd jlccdzj umngclw xrlv wifrc