A Critical Study of the Madhouse in Gothic Literature
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The Literature of Madness: A Critical Study of the Madhouse in Gothic Literature Benjamin E. Noad Submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the award of Doctor of Philosophy School of Arts and Humanities Division of Literature and Languages University of Stirling July 2018 1 ABSTRACT This thesis is a critical study of British and American Gothic prose representations of madness and the madhouse. This focuses on historical changes in asylum practice from the mid-nineteenth to the early twenty-first century, specifically from 1846 to 2014. While Gothic scholarship generally regards madness as being identifiable within most works of the genre, few studies have attempted to explain why it is that the Gothic’s fascination with madness has endured beyond its literary origins in the late eighteenth century. Surprisingly, no full-length critical study has yet historically documented the Gothic mode’s longstanding preoccupation with the madhouse, especially given how numerous these encounters in Gothic fictions are. For this reason, the present study turns its attention exclusively towards the institutional figure of the madhouse: a territory where madness has already been labelled into existence. The object of this thesis is to demonstrate how the Gothic text is haunted by notions of madness, and how in turn, the madhouse is haunted by discourses of the Gothic. This reading – informed by hauntology – of the Gothic madhouse space argues that by ‘gothicising’ the medical institution, Gothic fictions appeal to a memory of what has come before and anticipates a future for madness in Western culture. For this reason, Gothic encounters with the madhouse (where madness is simultaneously present and absent) are knowingly engaged with critiquing, politicising, rejecting, or even ignoring, the historical discourses on madness with which they are contemporary. This also examines the genre’s complicity and reciprocity in longstanding and prejudicial attitudes towards mental ill-health. Divided into five historical epochs, this thesis reads: the Sweeney Todd story The String of Pearls (1846); Mary Elizabeth Braddon’s Lady Audley’s Secret (1861-2); Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1897); four tales from H.P. Lovecraft including ‘The Tomb’ (1917), ‘Beyond the Wall of Sleep’ (1919), The Case of Charles Dexter Ward (1927), and ‘The Thing on the Doorstep’ (1933); Robert Bloch’s Psycho (1959); Ken Kesey’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1962); Iain Banks’ The Wasp Factory (1984); Michael Moorcock’s Mother London (1988); Patrick McGrath’s Spider (1990), Asylum (1991), ‘Ground Zero’ (2005) and Trauma (2007); Sarah Waters’ Fingersmith (2002), and John Harwood’s The Asylum (2014). 2 Contents ABSTRACT .............................................................................................................................. 1 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS .................................................................................................... 3 AUTHOR’S DECLARATION ............................................................................................... 4 LIST OF FIGURES ................................................................................................................. 5 APPENDIX: TIMELINE OF THE MADHOUSE ............................................................... 6 INTRODUCTION.................................................................................................................... 8 CHAPTER ONE: GOTHIC TRUTHS IN THE ASYLUM ............................................. 366 CHAPTER TWO: H.P. LOVECRAFT AND THE MADHOUSE.................................. 688 CHAPTER THREE: [S]CARE IN THE COMMUNITY………………………………101 CHAPTER FOUR: PATRICK MCGRATH’S ASYLUMS............................................132 CHAPTER FIVE: THE NEO-VICTORIAN MADHOUSE……………………………168 CONCLUSION: SPECTRES OF MADNESS...................................................................197 BIBLIOGRAPHY…………………………………………………………………………215 3 Acknowledgements I would like to offer my thanks to Professor Dale Townshend, now at Manchester Metropolitan University, whose early guidance and supervision of the first two-years of this work has been invaluable. A change of supervisor in the PhD process often prompts anxious situations; I am thankful never to have encountered anything of the sort when such a change did occur. I am beyond grateful to Dr Timothy Jones for his input, advice, suggestions and tireless support – it has been a genuine delight to have benefitted from his supervision: thank you. Thank you, too, to my secondary supervisor, Professor Justin Edwards, for helping me reframe the scope of this research into something far more manageable, and for your continued support of this research. I would like to thank the staff at the National Library of Scotland and the Wellcome Library. I would also like to thank the University of Stirling Archives and Special Collections. In particular, I want to highlight the support of Karl Magee: not only has Karl tirelessly accommodated my requests for materials, but he has gone above and beyond in providing me with opportunities to consult a wider range of manuscripts. Thank you to the University of Stirling Division of Literature’s generous funding that has enabled me to visit archives, conferences, and put on events such as The Gothic Showcase in 2015. I also acknowledge the support of the Wellcome Collection in funding my work as Research Assistant for the Patrick McGrath Symposium of January 2016. I remain grateful for the support and friendship of the International Gothic Association, and to all of my friends and colleagues in F30. Thank you to Kelly, Stuart, Fanny, Sonja, Janet, Emily and Alan. To my friend Dr Adam Dighton: your passion for research is contagious! I could not have undertaken a research degree without the unfaltering support of my parents, Andy and Sally. My partner, Rosa King, is a credit to the nursing profession and (thankfully!) nothing at all like many of the mental health nurses featured in this thesis. Thank you, Rosa, for your love and support. Finally, this thesis is dedicated to the memory of my grandmother, Brenda Newton: without her generosity I would not have been able to receive any postgraduate education; your early tales of Bluebeard and knowledge of real-life ghosts made me a lover of the Gothic at an early age. 4 Author’s Declaration I declare that this thesis is my own work and that all critical and other sources (literary and electronic) have been specifically and properly acknowledged, as and when they occur in the body of my text. A version of chapter one of this thesis and parts of the introduction have been confirmed for publication in the following: Noad, B. 2018. ‘Gothic Truths in the Asylum’ Gothic Studies 21/12 (Forthcoming November 2019). A version of chapter two has been confirmed for publication in the following: Noad, B. 2019. ‘His Madness knew no affinity: Reimagining Arkham Asylum’ Studies in Gothic Fiction, (Forthcoming 2019) Chapter four’s section on Spider has been confirmed for publication in the following: Noad, B. 2019. ‘Spider, Sanity and Schizophrenia’, in ed. by Matt Foley and Rebecca Duncan, Patrick McGrath and his Worlds (London: Routledge, Forthcoming) An earlier draft of the introduction was presented as a talk given as part of the 2017 IGA conference in Pueblo, entitled ‘The Gothic Madhouse’. Signed: B. Noad – 16/07/2018 5 List of Figures Figure 1: Argyll District Asylum……………………………………………………….31 Figure 2: Advert for Peckham House…………………………………………………..48 Figure 3: Medical Notes and Patient Sketches………………………………………....55 Figure 4: Butler Hospital for the Insane………………………………………………..83 Figure 5: ‘Arkham adapted from a sketch by H.P. Lovecraft’………………………………………………………………………………....93 Figure 6: ‘A map of Arkham’ by Gahan Wilson……………………………………………………………………………………..93 Figure 7: The Divided Self……………………………………………………………….105 6 Appendix: Timeline of the Madhouse: Featuring key events and publications in the treatment of madness - 4 BC: Hippocratic medicine comprises the theory of the humours: blood (signifying vitality); choler (yellow bile signifying gastric and digestive functions); phlegm (lubricant and coolant); and melancholy (black bile associated with skin pigmentations amongst other conditions). It was believed that an excess of blood and yellow bile might lead to mania, while black bile might be linked to melancholy and depression. Phlebotomy and venesection were frequent medical treatments. - Galen’s On the Causes and Signs of Diseases is one of the first medical texts to treat melancholy. - 1025 AD. Ibn Sina (Avicenna) completes the Canon of Medicine – one of the most influential treatises of medicine ever written. - 1247: St Mary of Bethlehem Hospital opens in London. - 1563: Johannes Wayer writes De Praestigiis Daemonum (‘On the Conjuring Tricks of Demons) – an early effort to ‘medicalise’ the witch trials that had occurred throughout Europe. - 1586: Timothie Bright publishes the first English treatise on melancholia. - 1621: Robert Burton compiles The Anatomy of Melancholy. - 1656: The Salpêtirére is founded. - 1679: James Carkesse writes Lucida Intervalla. - 1690: John Locke’s Essay Concerning Human Understanding. - 1725: Richard Blackmore writes the Treatise of the Spleen and Vapours. - 1726: William Cullen of Edinburgh University medicalises many of Locke’s ideas and insanity is viewed as a nervous disorder. - 1730: Bernard Mandeville writes the Treatise of the Hypochondriack and Hysteric Diseases. - 1733: The English Malady by George Cheyne is published.