Title: “A Hideous torture on himself” Madness & Self-Mutilation in Victorian Literature
1A Hideous torture on himselfMadness
Self-Mutilation in Victorian Literature
- Sarah Chaney s.chaney_at_ucl.ac.uk
- Wellcome Trust Centre for the History of Medicine
at UCL - International Health Humanities Conference 2010
2The Scarlet LetterNathaniel Hawthorne, 1850
- Dimmesdales self-mutilation a course of
penance - 19th century literature and psychological
symbolism - The literary case study a validation of
psychological medicine - Psychology a universal truth?
3Self-Mutilation and Victorian Psychiatry
- New terminology from self-injury to
self-mutilation - The context Bethlem Royal Hospital
- Definitions, 1880-1900
- A lack of historical research
- Literary allegory symbolic self-mutilation
4The Strange Case In Staffordshire Isaac Brooks,
1882
- The case of mutilation which is now exciting so
much public interest. - The Lancet, 14 Jan 1882
- There cannot be the slightest doubt in the mind
of any one ... that the case was throughout one
of self-mutilation from insanity. - The Times, 13 Jan 1882
5The Case of Isaac Brooks Journal of Mental
Science, 1882
- The man was single, and lived a very subjective
life he was just the type of man in whom all the
evils of civilization seem to accumulate, great
sensibility, with loss of power of control, an
emotional but ill-ruled machine. A solitary man,
thinking himself misunderstood and neglected,
building castles in the air, finding the times
out of joint, and from this idea conceiving that
he has enemies and persecutors...
The man was single, and lived a very subjective
life he was just the type of man in whom all the
evils of civilization seem to accumulate, great
sensibility, with loss of power of control, an
emotional but ill-ruled machine. A solitary man,
thinking himself misunderstood and neglected,
building castles in the air, finding the times
out of joint, and from this idea conceiving that
he has enemies and persecutors...
6Arthur Conan Doyle (1859-1930) and
Self-Mutilation
- Background Charles Altamont Doyle (1832-1893)
- Has been weak minded nervous from his youth,
and from his own account took refuge in
alcoholics very early to give him courage c. - Nervous heredity
- Nervous habits the sliding scale of
self-mutilation
7Doyle and the Changing Meaning of Self-Mutilation
- Shock and intrigue in fiction mutilations which
are worse than death. (The Surgeon Talks) - The hereditary taint of madness (The Surgeon of
Gaster Fell, 1890) - Neurological impulse and the will (The Beryl
Coronet, 1892) - Spiritualism, the self and the hidden meaning
theSociety for PsychicalResearch
8Conclusion
- Self-mutilation literature part of the
problematic debate over the will and the self - Motivation implied individual responsibility,
through lifestyle/character, eg. sexual or
criminal stereotype - Self-mutilation seen as morbid introspection
- Symbolic (political) nature of self-mutilation
- Sarah Grand The Heavenly Twins (1893) and new
women literature - Self-mutilation represented as an act against
society
9Thank You!