MENSTRUAL, MENTAL, and Emotlonal ILLNESS in CHARLOTTE BRONTË'sshirley and VILLETTE
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
THE RISE OF MODERN MEDICINE AND THE VICTORIAN NOVEL: MENSTRUAL, MENTAL, AND EMOTlONAL ILLNESS IN CHARLOTTE BRONTË'SSHIRLEY AND VILLETTE Nicola Ivy Spunt Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts Dalhousie University Hdi fax, Nova Scotia September 2000 Q Copyright by Nicola Ivy Spunt, 2000 National Library Biiliothbque nationale I*I of Canada du Canaûa Acquisitions and Acquisitions et Bibliographie Services senrices bibliographiques 395 Wellington Street 395,rw Weilingtori Ottawa ON K1A ON4 OitawaON KIAûN4 Canada Cenada The author has granted a non- L'auteur a accordé une Licence non exclusive licence allowing the exclusive permettant à la National Library of Canada to Bibliothèque nationale du Canada de reproduce, loan, distribute or sell reproduire, prêter, distribuer ou copies of this thesis in microform, vendre des copies de cette thèse sous paper or electronic formats. la forme de microfiche/film, de reproduction sur papier ou sur format électronique. The author retains ownership of the L'auteur conserve la propriété du copyright in this thesis. Neither the &oit d'auteur qui protège cette thèse. thesis nor substantial extracts fiom it Ni la thèse ni des extraits substantiels may be printed or othenvise de celle-ci ne doivent être imprimés reproduced without the author's ou autrement reproduits sans son permission. autorisation. For Ronnie, Louise, Alie, and Dana TABLE OF CONTENTS Abstract .......................................................................................................................... vi .. List of Abbreviations ........................................................................................................ vil .*. Acknowledgments......................................................................................................... viii Introduction .......................................................................................................................... 1 Chapter 1: "Gazing Inside the Corporeai Crystal Bali": Toward a New Epistemology of the Sick Body ............................................................................................................ 15 Chapter II: "Menstrual, Mental, and Emotional": Nineteenth-Century Medical Discourses for Victorian Women .......................................................................................29 Chapter III: Slzirley: A Study in the 111s of Self-Abnegation ............................................. 52 Chapter IV: Branding Judgrnents in Villette: The Clinical Gaze and Brontë's Discourse of Defiance ...................................................................................................... 100 Bibliography ..................................................................................................................157 ABSTRACT By investigating representations of women's illness in Charlotte Brontë's Shirley and Villette, 1 endeavour to use literature as a cultural thermometer to assess how nineteenth-century social and medical ideologies converged and permeated the cultural imaginary. The rise of modem medicine ushered in an era of normalizing and moralizing medicine that had significant implications for social perceptions of women, their bodies, and their health. 1 outline the conceptual and technological developments that contributed to the medical institution's ascension to a position of power. Against this larger historical backdrop, 1 evaluate discourses on women's diseases, and focus particularly on medical t heorists' treatments of menstruation, emotion, and insanity . 1 engage in close readings of Shirley and Ville~eto elucidate the ways in which Brontë simultaneously appeals to and challenges medical rhetoric in order to challenge oppressive socio-medical norms for women. I explore how the auihor's symbolic intertwining of themes of love, starvation, and illness enables her to comment on emotional repression and circumscnbed gender roles. I claim that Brontë draws on both popular and medical assumptions regarding menstruation in her representations of female disorders; however, I argue that the integration of a menstrual subtext is ultimately subversive as it enables a portrayal of female subordination that takes into account its multiple medical and social dimensions. In Shirley, Brontë uses instances of illness to comment on the dimensions of female oppression. In Villette, the author brings the doctor-patient relationship to the fore in order to elaborate a narrative of resistance to pemicious medical dictates for women. 1 contend that Brontë's novels emerge as sites of resistance to a medical tradition that reinforces and perpetuates oppressive social stereotypes regarding gender and health. LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS Elaine Showalter - A Lirerature of Their Own .................................................................... ALTO Elaine Showalter - The Femrile Mnlady ................................................................................ FM Sally Shuttlewonh - "Female Circulation: Medical Discourse and Popular Advertising in the Mid-Victonan Era" in Body/Pulitics ........................................................................... BP Sally S huttleworth - Chm-lotte Brontë and Viciorian Psychology ........................................ CBVP vii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 1 would first like to acknowledge the extent to which my three committee members, Marjorie Stone, Sue Campbell, and Sue Sherwin. have helped to shape my exprrience at Dalhousie into a positive and profound one. 1 want to thank you al1 for your thoughtful insight and encouragement throughout the yew. as well as dunng the writing of the thesis. 1 would dso like to thank Amanda Coen and Colin Johnston for their endless suppon. patience, and confidence. And thanks to Matt Kemer for always believing in me and encouraging me to follow my dreams. INTRODUCTION The rise of modem medicine in the nineteenth century ushered in an enof nonnalizing and moralizing medicinr that had significant implications for social perceptions of wornen, their bodies, and their health. The influence of medical thinkers and scientific theorists was extremely pervasive dunng the reign of Queen Victoria, helping to transform medicine into a cultural institution of authority and power. Victotian culture thrived on a rigidly dichotomized social system that relegated men to the public sphere of power and voice, and women to the private domain of nunuring and silence. W i th the development of scientific theories on the nature of female physiology and its liabilities. medical and cultural ideas penaining to gender mutually reinforced one another. facilitating the dissemination of oppressive conceptualizations of women and illness. In this thesis 1 will investigate the impact of medical discourses on the lives of Victorian wornen by studying representations of femde illness in Charlotte Brontë's novels. For reasons that 1 outline below, 1 have chosen to focus on the femaie protagonists in her two last novels, Shirley and Villette. By appealing to literature as a tool for unveiling the ways in which pernicious medical dictates permeated the nineteenth-century cultural irnaginary, i hope to offer a way of interpreting the impact of medicalization on Victorian women during a time when their opportunities to challenge socio-medical norms were few. Medicine and Literature: The Channing Dialectic Between 'Two Cultures' We currently inhabit a world that is increasingly dominated by advances in technology, and where the perceived disparities between the culture of science and that of an have been normalized and reified. However, as medical historian Michael Neve points out, "[tlhe endless discussion of 'two cultures', in this case science and the humanities, in fact conceals a great deal of interpenetration and CO-mingling"( 1533). In his article entitled "Medicine and Literature," Neve dnws our attention to the long- standing exchange between Western medicine and literature. and outlines a history of literary representations of medicine through the ages. He hrst takes us through the works of Chaucer. Rabelais. and Shakespeare to reveal their more satincal treatment of the doctor's role in society. The wntings of eighteenth-century authon. such as Denis Diderot and Samuel Johnson. instead characterize the physician as a "heroic" figure ( 1521). who is "more socially beneficial [and] more attentive in the understanding of patients" ( 1526). By the nineteenth century. however. medicine has assumed a very significant position in the cultural reality and imaginary, and Neve points out that there are innumerable authon taking up medical topics in their novels - George Eliot, Gustave Flaubert. and Anthony Trollope, to name a few. Just as literary writers have frequentl y incorporated medical themes in to their works. medical writers throughout history. and particularly nineteenthsentury psychological theorists. have often subscnbed to literary representations of sickness to elucidate the complex interpiay of mental, emotional, and physical symptoms in iliness. In their text, A Manual of Psychological Medicine ( 1862). J. C. Bucknill and D. H. Tuke appeal to the poetry of Dryden in order to enhance their medical description of melancholia: The incubation of melancholy is generdly proionged. and sufficiently obvious. The subject of it loses his relish for existence, he feels depressed and unequd to the ordinary duties which cal1 him to public life, and in the domestic circle he is more silent than in health. and seeks