Table Of ContentFIGURING MADNESS IN NINETEENTH-CENTURY
FICTION
Figuring Madness
•
tn
Nineteenth-Century
Fiction
-----------
~------
Chris Wiesenthal
Assistant Professor of English
University of Alberta, Edmonton
First published in Great Britain 1997 by
MACMILLAN JlRESS LTD
Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS and London
Companies and representatives throughout the world
A catalogue record for this hook is available from the British Library.
ISBN 978-1-349-39460-9 ISBN 978-0-230-37131-6 (eBook)
DOI 10.1057/9780230371316
First published in the United States of America 1997 by
ST. MARTIN'S PRESS, INC.,
Scholarly and Reference Division,
175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010
ISBN 978-0-312-17495-8
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Wiesenthal, Chris, 1963-
Figuring madness in nineteenth-century fiction I Chris Wiescnthal.
p. em.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-312-17495-8 (cloth)
I. English fiction-19th century-History and criticism.
2. Literature and mental illness-Great Britain-History-19th
century. 3. Literature and mental illness-United States
-History-19th century. 4. Psychological fiction, English-History
and criticism. 5. Psychological fiction, American-History and
cnllcJsrn. 6. American fiction-19th century-History and
criticism. 7. Psychoanalysis and literature. 8. Mental illness in
literature. 9. Mentally ill in literature. I. Title.
PR868.M46W54 1997
823'.809353-dc21 97-5837
CIP
©Chris Wiesenthal 1997
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 1997 978-0-333-63466-0
All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made
without written permission.
No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with
written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and
Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permilling limited copying issued by
the Copyright Licensing Agency, 90 Tollenham Court Road, London WI P 9HE.
Any person who docs any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to
criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.
1l1c author has asserted her right to be identified as the author of this work in accordance
with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and
sustained forest sources.
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2
06 05 04 03 02 01 00
Contents
Page
Chapter 1: Introduction: Figuring Madness 1
Chapter 2: 'Unheard-of Contradictions':
The Language of Madness in
Charlotte Perkins Gilman's
'The Yellow Wallpaper' 23
Chapter 3: 'Running Mad': Loco-Motion
and the Madness of Language
in Jane Austen's 'Love and
Friendship' 41
Chapter 4: The Bodr Melancho]le:
Trollope sHe Knew e Was Right 63
Chapter 5: The Suffocation of The Mother:
Hysteria and Heart and Science 97
Chapter 6: The Silent 'Horrors' of The Turn
ofThe Screw and 'The Yellow
Wallpaper' Revisited 108
Chapter 7: Subjects at Sea: The
Paranoiac Knowledge
of Moby-dick 139
Epilogue: Dia-gnosis 185
Works Cited 190
v
This book is dedicated
with love and respect
to the memory of my parents
Renate and Dieter
'All thought is but a memory of a gratification.'
- Freud
vii
Acknowledgments
Like many books, this one has been in the making longer than I
anticipated. Written across many years, it was deferred and
deflected both by more immediate professional and personal oblig
ations. Ironically, now that I have come through my distractions
sufficiently far as to let the work go, I feel a strange sadness instead
of the exhilaration I expected. My melancholy, it seems, is but this
book's last defiance of what I thought were my safest assumptions;
writing it has been bound up with, for me, some pretty radical
lessons in the pure power of unpredictability.
It is, nevertheless, with great pleasure that I now write to
acknowledge the assistance and support of many generous people
who contributed, directly or indirectly, to my efforts with this
project. First and foremost, this book would not have come into
being were it not for the patience and continued encouragement
of my editor, Charmian Hearne, who not only took setbacks to
my progress in stride, but also proved graciously receptive to m.y
revisions of the original manuscript.
I owe a prior and even more extensive intellectual and personal
debt to two gifted and generous mentors in particular: Juliet
McMaster and Rowland McMaster. Both by the scholarly examples
they have set for me, and through their unstinting support of my
work, they have made, individually and together, an enormous and
lasting difference in my academic career and in my life.
Pat Prestwich, Jan Goldstein, and Garry Watson read a much
earlier version of this manuscript, and all of them contributed
suggestions for revision and avenues of thought which have
benefitted the present work. Thanks to Derek Higginbotham,
Danielle Nagy, and Margaret McCutcheon for their extremely
efficient and creative work as research assistants, and to the
helpful staffs at the University of Alberta Library, the Wellcome
Institute, and the British and Bodleian Libraries. Members of my
1995-6 graduate seminar, 'Writing and Reading the Unconscious,'
extended my thinking in new directions and inspired me with
their energy and adroit intelligence. In the office, Astrid Blodgett,
Carol Kleckner, and Linda Schultz rescued me, as usual, in various
last-minute pinches related to the production of the manuscript.
ix
