Villette (1853)
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This electronic thesis or dissertation has been downloaded from Explore Bristol Research, http://research-information.bristol.ac.uk Author: Benson James, Louise T Title: Hysterical Bodies and Narratives Medical Gothic and Women’s Fiction, Victorian to Contemporary General rights Access to the thesis is subject to the Creative Commons Attribution - NonCommercial-No Derivatives 4.0 International Public License. A copy of this may be found at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/legalcode This license sets out your rights and the restrictions that apply to your access to the thesis so it is important you read this before proceeding. Take down policy Some pages of this thesis may have been removed for copyright restrictions prior to having it been deposited in Explore Bristol Research. However, if you have discovered material within the thesis that you consider to be unlawful e.g. breaches of copyright (either yours or that of a third party) or any other law, including but not limited to those relating to patent, trademark, confidentiality, data protection, obscenity, defamation, libel, then please contact [email protected] and include the following information in your message: •Your contact details •Bibliographic details for the item, including a URL •An outline nature of the complaint Your claim will be investigated and, where appropriate, the item in question will be removed from public view as soon as possible. Hysterical Bodies and Narratives: Medical Gothic and Women’s Fiction, Victorian to Contemporary Louise Benson James A dissertation submitted to the University of Bristol in accordance with the requirements for award of the degree of PhD in the Faculty of Arts. School of English, September 2019. Word count: 79,716 Abstract This thesis explores the narrativisation of medical hysteria in women’s prose fiction. Through five case studies from the Victorian to the contemporary, I define a medical Gothic that materialises around the topic of the protean symptomatology of hysteria, and the figure of the hysteric, an enduring symbol of the unruly female body. I draw out the intense focus on physiology, a medically-inflected language of Gothic pathology, and an interest in the vagaries of the nervous system. These writers are interested in the role of language in controlling or liberating the female body, appropriating medical discourse in order to challenge stereotypes about women’s bodies and social roles. I track hysteria’s development as both a pathology and a metaphor. Close readings of original medical texts reveal the literary techniques used in the construction of the disorder, which in turn demonstrates the anxiety and performativity of medical authority. My study begins with an analysis of nervous disorder in Charlotte Brontë’s Villette (1853). Chapter Two looks at pathological blushing in the novel Nancy (1873) and other symptoms in short supernatural fiction by Rhoda Broughton. Chapter Three examines Lucas Malet’s The Wages of Sin (1891) and The Survivors (1923), novels which thematise hysterical bodies and spaces of illness, surgery and death. Chapter Four highlights the bodily grotesque and the intracorporeal landscape in Djuna Barnes’s Ryder (1928) and Nightwood (1936). Finally, Chapter Five interrogates a contemporary depiction of the hysteric in Helen Oyeyemi’s The Opposite House (2007) and White is for Witching (2009). Writing as they are in different historical contexts, these authors present a tradition of medical female Gothic that, much like hysteria, is mutable and disorderly, responds to changing cultural stimuli, refuses to adhere to a fixed set of conventions, and has at its centre the ambivalent figure of the hysterical body. Key words: Body, Cultural, Disorder, Female, Fiction, Gothic, Hysteria, Language, Medical, Medicine, Narrative, Nervous, Pathology, Social, Symptoms, Victorian, Women. Acknowledgements I might have succumbed to hysteria at points during these last four years if not for the support, encouragement, and friendship of several parties whom I would like to thank. First and foremost, I must thank my brilliant primary supervisor Samantha Matthews. I could not have asked for a better academic advisor. Her feedback on my work has always been detailed, insightful and kind, and she has been immensely generous with her time and brain power. In addition, three secondary supervisors, who have taken me and this project on and provided influence and expertise at relevant points: Rowena Kennedy-Epstein, Tara Puri, and Emily Coit. Thanks also go to Maria Vaccarella, my upgrade assessor turned academic mentor, who initiated me into the field of medical humanities. Finally, I am indebted to the funding that allowed me to undertake this PhD, provided by the University of Bristol Graduate School of Arts and Humanities. I feel incredibly lucky to have been part of the university’s arts and humanities postgraduate community, an academic and social network without whose camaraderie this experience would have been much lonelier. Amongst this group of people, I have found a wealth of colleagues, friends, and collaborators. I would like to specifically thank Pam Lock, for her friendship and advocacy, and the writing retreats where so many of these words were generated; Jen Baker for making the postgraduate community what it is and for welcoming me so warmly; Leonie Thomas and Joan Passey, my comrades from the very start, for facilitating much therapeutic processing, solidarity and laughter; and finally the badminton gang, for a joyful weekly distraction that fostered firm friendships beyond academia. Immeasurable thanks go to my fantastic man Liam McAuley, who has shored me up on numerous occasions, absorbed both my enthusiasm and stress, and acted as a sounding board for resolving tricky ideas. He has been a steady source of encouragement, calm and inspiration, and created a home life full of laughter, diversion, support, and sourdough that has carried me through. Finally, my heartfelt thanks to my parents Barbara Benson and David James, my sister Kate Benson James, and my grandad Frank Benson, for a lifetime of overwhelmingly generous love and support. Without them I would not be where or who I am. Author’s Declaration I declare that the work in this dissertation was carried out in accordance with the requirements of the University's Regulations and Code of Practice for Research Degree Programmes and that it has not been submitted for any other academic award. Except where indicated by specific reference in the text, the work is the candidate's own work. Work done in collaboration with, or with the assistance of, others, is indicated as such. Any views expressed in the dissertation are those of the author. Signed…………………………………………………………………………………… Date……………………………………………………………………………………… Publications arising from dissertation research Louise Benson James, ‘Hysterical Bodies and Gothic Spaces: Lucas Malet’s “Moral Dissecting-Room”’, in Lucas Malet, Dissident Pilgrim: Critical Essays, ed. by Jane Ford and Alexandra Gray (London: Routledge, 2019), pp. 33-51 -------, ‘Hysteria’, The Companion to Victorian Popular Fiction, ed. by Kevin A. Morrison (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, 2018), pp. 117-119 Table of Contents Introduction ................................................................................................................................... 1 Defining Hysteria ................................................................................................................................ 6 Hysteria’s Alleged Disappearance .................................................................................................... 15 Defining Medical Gothic .................................................................................................................. 17 Chapter Summaries ........................................................................................................................... 21 Chapter One: Nervous Disorder, Medical Discourse, and the Gothic in Charlotte Brontë’s Villette (1853) .......................................................................................................................................... 25 Causes ............................................................................................................................................... 34 Diagnoses .......................................................................................................................................... 44 Symptoms ......................................................................................................................................... 53 Treatments......................................................................................................................................... 61 Conclusion: Medicalised Gothic and Gothicised Medicine .............................................................. 66 Chapter Two: The Unruly Body in Rhoda Broughton’s Nancy (1873) and Supernatural Short Stories .................................................................................................................................................... 70 ‘That torrent of vivid scarlet’: Blushing as Symptom in Nancy (1873) ............................................ 75 ‘Why are there so many women in the world?’: Hysteria and Redundancy in Broughton’s Supernatural Stories .......................................................................................................................... 91 Conclusion