ll.. .With frenzied thougbts beset.. .ll :Depictions of Female Madness on the Nineteenth- Centurv Endish Stage. Susan M. Doran A thesis submitted in conformity with the requirements for the degree of Ph. D. Graduate Department of English University of Toronto O Susan M. Doran 2001 National Library Bibliothèque nationale 1+1 of Canacia du Canada Acquisitions and Acquisitions et Bibliographic Services services bibliographiques 395 Wellington Street 395, rue Wellington Ottawa ON KIA ON4 Ottawa ON KIA ON4 Canada Canada Your file Votre rélénwice Our lile Notre réllrenu, 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 microfonn, vendre des copies de cette thèse sous paper or electronic formats. la forme de microfichelfilm, 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 droit d'auteur qui protège cette thèse. thesis nor substantial extracts fiom it Ni la thèse ni des extraits substantiels may be printed or otherwise de celle-ci ne doivent être imprimés reproduced without the author's ou autrement reproduits sans son permission. autorisation. ABSTRACT: " .. WITH FRENWED THOUGHTS BESET.. .l' :DEPICTIONS OF FEMALE MADNESS ON THE NINETEENTH-CENTURY ENGLISH STAGE SUSAN M. DORAN PH.D. CANDIDATE. 2001 DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH UNnmsIn OF TORONTO Nineteenth-century drarna has long been viewed as insignificant in its contribution to the inteiiectual culture of the period. It has been assumed that until the advent of Wilde and Shaw the theatre had nothing to offer the literary scholar beyond a memory of colourful spectacle and theatrical anecdotes. The Victorian drama has been seen as a simple form of escapist entertainment. However, the plays performed in the nineteenth-century theatre reflected contemporw mores and ideals. An examination of a selection of these plays will look at the effect they had in rnirroring and solidimg such ideals, especially in the way that women were portrayed. The heroines and villainesses of the nineteenth-century theatre encapsulated the wider societal view of the ferninine psyche at a the when psychology began to emerge as a separate discipline. In a comparison of contemporary biological and psychological texts with certain of these popular theatrical female characters, it becomes evident that the theatre was significant in its contribution to the broader culture. While being described by biologists as the weaker sexywomen were portrayed as helpless heroines on stage. As women gained more autonomy in society their fictitious stage representations became more threatening and dangerous; this same contention was also put forward by social scientists and biologists. With the advent of the New Woman in the 1880s, the theatre attempted to come to terms with the changing role of women in society and concluded, Çequently, that they were a dangerous hybrid which threatened the race. At the same tirne psychologists continued to warn of the danger of such fi-actured psyches. An examination of popular nineteenth-century plays will show that the mad woman was not simply a conventional figure of Victorian melodrama, but also a puzzling, and occasionally fnghtening, reality for society at large. TABLE OF CONTENTS INTRODUCTION FEMALE MADNESS: POPULAR MYTH AND SCIENTIFIC SUPPOSITION 1 CHAPTER 1 MADNESS AND MELODRAMA The Melodramatic Stage: The Problern of Melodrama The Power of Melodrama Rornanîic Madness The Social, Psychological, Literary and Political Climate. The Romantic Ideal and the Woman Question. Romanticism and Scientific Determination The Dramatization of Biological Deterininism. CHAPTER 2 THE OPHELIA TYPE: PATHOS AND DISTRACTION 59 Three Versions of the Love-Melancholic: Clernenza. Crazy Jane and Lucy Ashton 70 Malleable Female Minds: Trilbv and The Woman in White. 86 Subverting the Stereotypes: Parodies and Travesties. 107 CEZAPTER 3 MADNESS AND SIN: SENSATION HEROINES 115 Motherhood and Madness: The Floatinn Beacon and East Lvnne. 126 Heredity and Insanity: Lady Audley's Secret 135 CHAPTER 4 FRACTURED PSYCHES: NEURASTHENIA AND THE 150 NEW WOMAN Dangerous Cranks: The Case of Rebellious Susan and 156 The New Woman Neurasthenia and Despair: The Notorious Mrs. Ebbsmith and The Second Mrs. Tanqueray. 162 RefutingMadness: Alan'sWife 181 CONCLUSION 192 APPENDM CRAZY JANE 197 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 1. Ophelia (1 832). Arthur Hughes. II. Ophelia (1 852). John Everett Millais. III. Dorothea Baird as Trilby. IV. The Woman in White: Count Fosco and Ann Catherick. v. Playbill for The Woman in White. VI. Donna Quixote. VII. Mrs. Patrick Campbell as Mad Agnes. VIII. Mrs. Patrick Campbell as Mad Agnes. lx. Four vignettes from The Notorious Mrs. Ebbsmith. X. The Bible burning episode fiom The Notorious Mrs. Ebbsmith. XI. Mrs. Patrick Campbell in the role of Mrs. Tanqueray. INTRODUCTION FEMALE MADNESS: POPULAR MYTH AND SCIENTIFIC SUPPOSITION In Act III of Pinero's play of 1895, The Notorious Mrs Ebbsmith, Agnes Ebbsmith States, "1 believe, to be a woman is to be mad."' Such a statement could be seen as a nineteenth-century commonplace. The interesting fact about Agnes's statement is not the content but the speaker, for she is reflecting on the assurned normality of female madness rather than surrendering to it, as many nineteenth- century stage heroines had done. Agnes's awareness of her social condition and her questioning of it, although short-lived, are rare exarnples in native British drarna of the period. The "normality" of female mental instability was a supposition that was tacitly accepted and expressed on stage throughout the nineteenth century. The concept that women were, more or less, congenitally and constitutionally predisposed to insanity or, at least, to hysteria was a popular myth in this period: hysteria was fiequently a synonyrnous term for madness when it was applied to women. This supposition coloured the portrayal of women on stage, in the novel, and in articles and books which engaged with the subject of women in society. Even a cursory glance at these texts leads one to believe that the state of being female was thought to be at best a weakened state or at worst a potentially pathological condition. The obvious differences in female anatomy and biological make-up were given moral and psychological significance; social divisions between the sexes were seemingly reinforced by medical research. Laennec's invention of the stethoscope in the early part of the nineteenth century led one of his compatriots to hypothesize on the gender differences between two parts of the same organ. Paul Louis Doroziez thought that the left ventricle of the heart was the male part because it was calm and stable, while the right ventricle was assumed to be the female part because it was "nervous, impressionable, and easily disordered." Doctors argued that the female reproductive system predisposed women to fits of hysteria and nervous excitement thus making them unfit to engage with the world at large. It was assumed that, lefi uncurbed, the hysterical woman could hmthe social fabric. In the 1880's S. Weir Mitchell, novelist and physician, developed a "rest cure" to return the hysterical female to a state of equilibrium, not just for herself but for her immediate society. He remarked, "An hysterical girl is, as Wendel1 Holmes has said... a vampire who sucks the blood of the healthy people about her."3 This was only one of many images of dangerous, mythic or fictitious creatures with which the hysterical woman was compared. She was, variously, a life-draining succubus, a siren, a harpy or a potentially deadly untamed beast in much of the literature of the period from Keats's Lamia, through Charlotte Brontë's Bertha Mason, to Du Maurier's Trilby. Al1 these characters are assumed to be dangerous because their sensual appetites are destructive. This view was maintained throughout the period, for example Paula in Pinero's The Second Mrs Tanqueray (1 893)4, is described by Aubrey as having "strange" and "warped" notions which are a result of her promiscuous past. When Agnes Ebbsmith makes the statement quoted above, Lucas replies, "No, to be a woman trying not to be a woman -- that is to be mad." (517) Being a woman meant for Lucas (who is voicing a widely-held belief) conforming to the notion of femininity which society fostered and demanded. Such a notion relied on strict sexual differentiation which, it was asserted, was founded on unassailable biological fact. The eminent alienist Henry Maudsley writes: When Nature spends in one direction, she must economize in another direction. That the development of puberty does draw heavily upon the vital resources of the female constitution, needs not to be pointed out to those who know the nature of the important physiological changes which then take place.5 Maudsley goes on to Say that women are therefore more easily subject to mental prob1ems:"Their nerve-centres being in a state of greater instability, by reason of the development of their reproductive hctions, they will be the more easily and the more seriously deranged."6 Furthemore, the notion that women "acted out" their derangement was also a widely held belief. J. McGrigor Allen notes: With regard to public professions, the stage perhaps offers the most legitimate field for the display of female energy and talent, whatever moralists may Say to the contrary... woman follows her natural vocation, and gratifies her passion for exhibiting herself, and attracting the admiration of the other sex of man.' He continues by stating that "al1 women are more or less actresses." Significantly, actresses were often called upon to portray insanity, while the general female population was considered to be prone to insane fits which they then acted out in their real lives.