We will explore various themes related to insanity and altered states of consciousness by examining a number of 19th-century works of fiction. Novelists and poets often had the greatest insights into the workings of the mind, and many Victorian psychiatrists cited works of fiction in their case studies. Among the authors we will cover are Charlotte Brontë, Edgar Allan Poe, Wilkie Collins, Gogol, Herman Melville and Charlotte Perkins Gilman.
What will we cover?
-The Fall of the House of Usher (1839). Poe’s short story contains a range of psychological phenomena. They include: morbidity, neurosis/hysteria, heredity, possibly also venereal disease.
-Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë (1847). We will concentrate on: ‘moral insanity’, alcoholism, serious delusional disorder/‘schizophrenia’, the menstrual cycle, home-incarcerated ‘lunatics’.
-The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins (1860). Wrongful or malicious asylum certification. Learning difficulties.
-The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1892). Gilman’s short story/novella covers: post-natal psychosis, the medicalisation of femininity, the late 19th-century diagnosis ‘neurasthenia’.
-Bartleby The Scrivener by Herman Melville (1853): ‘monomania’, autism, work-related anxiety, the ‘crisis’ of masculinity.
-The Diary of A Madman by Nikolai Gogol (1834); paranoia, delusions of grandeur.
-Harriet by Elizabeth Jenkins (1934). The plight of the learning disabled, legal measures to protect those deemed incapable of caring for themselves, the passing of the 1913 Mental Deficiency Act.
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