“A Hideous torture on himself” Madness & Self-Mutilation in Victorian Literature - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

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“A Hideous torture on himself” Madness & Self-Mutilation in Victorian Literature

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Title: “A Hideous torture on himself” Madness & Self-Mutilation in Victorian Literature


1
A 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

2
The 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?

3
Self-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

4
The 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

5
The 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...
6
Arthur 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

7
Doyle 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

8
Conclusion
  • 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

9
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