Consequential Madness: Gender and Power in Romantic-Period Madhouse Literature

Deborah Elizabeth Russell

Consequential Madness: Gender and Power in Romantic-Period Madhouse Literature

English and Related Literature

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding › Chapter

Abstract

This chapter discusses late-eighteenth- and early-nineteenth-century literary texts that depict the madhouse as a Gothic space in which individuals are pushed to the limits of what they can bear. In the language of William Battie’s 1758 Treatise on Madness, it is “Consequential” rather than “Original” madness that is of interest in such works: disorders that occur in response to a trauma. This group of texts exploits the terrible irony of the potential for that external cause to be the madhouse itself. In doing so, they hit a cultural raw nerve centring on the unjust confinement of women and demonstrate how easily madness could be defined as behaviour that disrupted gendered hierarchies.

Original language	English
Title of host publication	Life, Death, and Consciousness in the Long Nineteenth Century
Editors	Lucy Cogan, Michelle O'Connell
Publisher	Palgrave
Chapter	10
ISBN (Print)	978-3-031-13362-6
Publication status	Accepted/In press - 9 Sep 2022

Publication series

Name	Palgrave Studies in Literature, Science and Medicine
Publisher	Palgrave

Keywords

Madhouses
Gothic
Medical Humanities
Romantic-period literature

Cite this

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AB - This chapter discusses late-eighteenth- and early-nineteenth-century literary texts that depict the madhouse as a Gothic space in which individuals are pushed to the limits of what they can bear. In the language of William Battie’s 1758 Treatise on Madness, it is “Consequential” rather than “Original” madness that is of interest in such works: disorders that occur in response to a trauma. This group of texts exploits the terrible irony of the potential for that external cause to be the madhouse itself. In doing so, they hit a cultural raw nerve centring on the unjust confinement of women and demonstrate how easily madness could be defined as behaviour that disrupted gendered hierarchies.

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