Charlotte Brontë and Victorian mental sciences

Charlotte Brontë and Victorian mental sciences

Corso di Laurea in Mediazione Linguistica e Comunicazione Letteraria

Elaborato scritto di prova finale

Supervisione laureando/a prof./a Greta Perletti Soso Lindaco - supervisione prof./a Francesca Di Blasio

Anno Accademico 2017/2018

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Table of contents

• Introduction 3
• Chapter 1: The mental sciences in Victorian Age 4
• Chapter 2: 2.1. Presentation 7
• 2.2. Mental disease in Jane Eyre 12
• 2.3. Phrenology in Jane Eyre 19
• Chapter 3: 3.1. Presentation 22
• 3.2. Phrenology in Villette 33
• 3.3. The importance of hallucinations in Villette 38
• Conclusions 41
• Bibliography 42

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Introduction

With the thesis I am presenting, I wish to demonstrate, through the analysis of Charlotte Brontë’s two novels “Jane Eyre” and “Villette”, how the concept of mental sciences was an important topic in Victorian Age.

The thesis consists of three chapters in which I will analyse the concept of mental disease in the current society and that of physiognomy and phrenology, the pseudo-sciences, to understand the traits of a person.

Charlotte Brontë was so fascinated by phrenology that she put it in her novels, making it become their interpretative key.

I will explain how Jane Eyre and Villette are the stories of two women who try to control their emotions. At that time, in fact, women had to be calm and the passionate woman was considered “unnatural” and “mad”. Everyone, men and women, especially women and children, had to suppress their emotions to be accepted by society. Jane and Lucy are women who feel the same restlessness and discontent as men when life does not give them a reason to fight.

Finally, I will focus on the “clinical gaze” of phrenology and how this will protect the two protagonists, Jane and Lucy, when they show their feelings.

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Chapter 1

1.1. The mental sciences in Victorian Age

In the eighteenth century, in England, scientists dedicated particular attention to the study of psychopathology, a field in which different new theories were born that caught the attention of the people. In fact, it is important to stress how not only doctors and academics but even common people, such as writers, followed every theoretical and practical development of psychiatry with extreme attention. This, together with the new science of phrenology, was object of constant interesting diffusion.

The Victorian society, proud of its successes, satisfied with itself and convinced that respectability was the only important virtue, was ready to accept anyone who managed to control by channelling positive energies and by following the current code of conduct, even tighter, especially for women, while it was implacable with those who disobeyed its rules. All this contributed to create an atmosphere of anxiety and suspicion, reinforced by the complaints and exhortations of alarmist doctors who in numerous writings analysed every behaviour from the clinical point of view. The theories on mental disease and its excesses were object of passionate interest, as the border between health and mental disease was considered too uncertain and tenuous. No one could really feel safe, the germs of madness could hide in everyone, especially in women, whose greater animality compared to men was “scientifically” demonstrated. Madness, defined as “moral insanity”, “a morbid perversion of natural feelings”, was no longer identified with the loss of reason but with that of self-control, necessary to avoid dangerous breakdowns. From here the anxious, often tormented surveillance and self-surveillance of many Victorians, for example Patrick Brontë and Charlotte Brontë, who were experts both in phrenology and in current psychiatric theories, in order to catch in time any sign of deviance in those who were around and in themselves.

1 Sally Shuttleworth, Charlotte Brontë and Victorian Psychology, Cambridge University Press, 1996, chapter 1.

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Therefore, “moral insanity” with its terrors was not a specialized topic, but well-known by people, and the large popular literature as well as nourishing individual fears and anxieties, strengthened old prejudices, giving them the unquestioned authority of science. Among these was the misogyny vein, typical of the current patriarchal vision: women, but also children, were considered subjects particularly at risk of mental disease or madness and they were to be severely kept under surveillance and controlled. In fact, they frequently abandoned themselves to kinds of “unbecoming behaviour” as it was called, any kind of behaviour that diverged from the dominant code constituted definitive evidence of unsociability, of “unnaturalness”, that was considered “moral insanity”. Everyone, especially women and children, had to demonstrate every day, at every moment, that they were able to control their emotion and those destructive, anarchistic energies that everyone of us hides inside. That was the only way to be sure, and to demonstrate to others, that one was sane and, therefore, socially acceptable, worthy of being part of society.

Charlotte Brontë’s fiction shared, with Victorian psychiatry, a preoccupation with the realms of excess: the workings of insanity and nervous disease, and the unstable constitution of female identity.

In the year of the publication of Villette, a writer in The Times offered the following observations on insanity: “Nothing can be more slightly defined than the line of demarcation between sanity and insanity… Make the definition too narrow, it becomes meaningless; make it too wide, the whole human race is involved in the drag-net.” The sentiments expressed tell us that the insane was regarded as an outcast, a sub-human species to be locked away with paupers and criminals.

2 Sally Shuttleworth, Charlotte Brontë and Victorian psychology, The Art of surveillance, page 11, Cambridge University Press 1996

3 Sally Shuttleworth, Charlotte Brontë and Victorian psychology, Insanity and selfhood, page 34, Cambridge University Press 1996

While the distinction between nature and culture, so centred in the 18th century, persists in the narrative and poetry of the 19th century, the current ideology of the Victorian period, heavily influenced by the new scientific theories, changes the traditional terms. “Natural” and “unnatural” have a new meaning completely different from the usual one, and now they mean “in accordance with the social rules” and “deviant by social rules”.

4 Mirella Billi, Il gotico inglese, Bologna, Il Mulino, 1986, p. 33

During the Victorian Age, along with religion with its repressive function, psychiatry and phrenology are scientific instruments to be accepted without discussion to exert on society a form of surveillance.

Victorian society becomes increasingly concerned with appearances as a way of distinguishing one person from another. This desire to use appearances to discern a person’s inner character gives rise of the study of physiognomy, which claims that a person can read another’s character by studying his or her face, and of phrenology that affirms that strengths, weaknesses, and potential can be discovered by reading bumps on the skull. These methods of reading become quite popular, and nearly all Victorians were familiar with the idea of using a person’s appearance to judge his or her character.

5 Sally Shuttleworth, Charlotte Brontë and Victorian Psychology, “Reading the mind: physiognomy and phrenology”, Cambridge University Press, 1966, p. 59

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The renewed interest in physiognomy in the last decades of the eighteenth century was due in large part to the work of the Swiss pastor, John Caspar Lavater, Physiognomical Fragments, for the Promotion of the knowledge and Love of Mankind.

6 Jenny Bourne Taylor & Sally Shuttleworth, An Anthology of Psychological Texts 1830-1890, Oxford University Press, 1998, p. 3

The science of phrenology which evolved from the work of Franz Joseph Gall shares with physiognomy an interest in deciphering external signs, but it was materialist. In Combe’s opinion one of the great advantage of phrenology is the light which it throws on the natural constitution of the mind.

7 Jenny Bourne Taylor & Sally Shuttleworth, An Anthology of Psychological Texts 1830-1890, Oxford University Press, 1998, p. 3

8 Jenny Bourne Taylor & Sally Shuttleworth, An Anthology of Psychological Texts 1830-1890, Oxford University Press, 1998, p. 31

Gall affirms that there are twenty-seven zones of the skull to which correspond the mind regions that correspond to the characteristics of people’s personalities. Gall showed how people with great faculties had big and bulging eyes. For him one’s mind memory was no more considered separated from one’s body, but as part of the organism.

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Chapter 2

2.1. Presentation

Jane Eyre is a novel that was originally published under the title of Jane Eyre: An Autobiography. It is a kind of autobiography of the author who published the book under the pseudonym Currer Bell.

As it happened for Pamela by Samuel Richardson, Jane Eyre has the ability to involve the reader not only because it is written in the first person, but also for the style that presents particular descriptions of environments and characters. The protagonist is not a static character and, in the story, one can notice how she evolves emotionally, romantically and morally. This is considered Charlotte Brontë’s masterpiece and during that period was received with enormous resonance.

The novel covers the following themes: the class-consciousness, the relationship between male and female, religion and feminism. The English author, Elizabeth Rigby, said that Jane was “the personification of an unsubordinated and not regenerated spirit” and that the novel was “Antichristian”.

9 Rigby, Elizabeth, “Vanity Fair–and Jane Eyre.” Quarterly Review. (December 1848): 153-185.

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Nowadays, the book is still relevant thanks to the many factors that make it unique: the wonderful descriptions that are lively and realistic, the characters’ psychology and the analysis of their feelings.

The best creation is without any doubt Jane with her great sense of morality, her independence, her inner strength and overwhelming passion tempered by her cleverness. Throughout the novel, it seems that Jane Eyre is near you, that she is telling you her story, as if she was in front of you. Although the book does not respect the social code of the time, it has its own morality and its own ethic. We must bear in mind that Charlotte was the daughter of a reverend and was raised following strict rules.

Jane Eyre is a timeless novel that attracts the reader thanks to its storytelling. It’s a coming-of-age novel, a love story with elements that classify the book among the gothic genre. The language used by the author is poetic, soaring and fancy, and Jane tells us about her misadventures using quite a high narrative tone.

The novel has a very modern point of view because the author complains about the unacceptable behaviours of Victorian Age mainly through Jane’s doppelgänger, Bertha Mason.

Jane’s moral rectitude doesn’t allow her to make compromises and she will find herself getting rid of her lover, whom she has always desired. Despite her extreme sacrifice, she will manage to get on with her life, following her convictions without being diverted. In the end, it will be that way that she will manage to conquer her happiness. Her morality is founded on love, tempered by reason, on independence and on forgiveness. Here is the best example of her morality:

[…] Laws and principles are not for the times when there is no temptation: they are for such moments as this, when body and soul rise in mutiny against their rigour; stringent are they; inviolate they shall be. If at my individual convenience I might break them, what would be their worth? They have a worth--so I have always believed; and if I cannot believe it now, it is because I am insane--quite insane […] Preconceived opinions, foregone determinations, are all I have at this hour to stand by: there I plant my foot

10 Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre, Penguin Books, 1966, p. 344

Religion is another important element of the novel and among the many characters, it is proposed in different ways. Jane finally manages to find a balance between the duties of morality and the happiness of her heart. She despises Mr. Blocklehurst’s hypocritical faith and she is disgusted by St. John Rivers’ search of the only religious duty because in her opinion he doesn’t behave like a human being, therefore, he doesn’t show his feelings. When she was a child, she admired Helen Burns’ philosophy and her faith, which influenced, which will cause her as an adult to forgive her aunt Reed and her children’s cruelty. These words help understand Helen’s faith.

It is not violence that best overwhelms hate nor vengeance that most certainly heals injury –

11 Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre, Penguin Books, 1966, p. 90

No ill-usage so brands its record on my feelings. Would you not be happier if you tried to forget her severity, together with the passionate emotions it excited? Life appears to me too short to be spent in nursing animosity, or registering wrongs. We are, and must be, one and all, burdened with faults in this world…

12 Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre, Penguin Books, 1966, p. 90-91

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However, Jane, passing through all these facets of religion, reaches a very miscellaneous mix that does not resemble any of the standard forms of Christianity. As I already said, she respects moral traditions, she sincerely believes, she is not a hypocrite in her faith nor a bigot, therefore, she holds something pagan in her thoughts.

Moreover, Jane is in a very ambiguous social position. She has no money but she is a very polite orphan educated by a good family, although the family is not happy that she is part of it. What I personally find amusing is that she is a really undesirable match but she also has a fervid intelligence – something that was not liked in the society of that time because it was believed that men had to be in command and it was impossible to have a clever person behind them, a stupid woman was preferable. Her position between two classes – although she is poor she has the opportunity to know wealthy people’s habits, admitting that wealth is something far from her and that makes her uncomfortable – allows her to criticize class discrimination. Although she is polite, she has good manners and is sophisticated, but after all she is still a governess, an employee, so of the middle-class and without any decisional power. She is different from her aunt Reed’s guests in the beginning and later from those of Rochester, who are aristocrats and rich. But it is important to note that she will ask Leah, the servant, lower class, therefore, beneath her, to bring her a candle instead of getting it herself and she will also have a servant.

Despite the fact that she knows what she can and cannot do in her social position, Rochester is the master and she is his employee, in daily problems, when she has affairs of the heart, she will declare that she is like him, as it is clear from her words:

I am not talking to you now through the medium of custom, conventionalities, nor even of moral flesh: it is my spirit that addresses your spirit; just as if both had passed through the grave, and we stood at God’s feet, equal – as we are!

13 Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre, Penguin Books, 1966, p. 281

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Another particular and important theme in the novel is the description of the patriarchal society. Jane tries to have her identity recognised in a society dominated by a male spirit. Three of the most important characters Mr. Brocklehurst, Mr. Rochester and St. John Rivers try to control Jane and suffocate her feelings and thoughts. Jane runs from Mr. Brocklehurst and his hypocrisy, she repudiates St. John and marries Rochester only when she is sure that the wedding will happen in a situation of equality on both sides. Through Jane, Charlotte Brontë opposes Victorian female stereotypes, articulating her thought:

Women are supposed to be very calm generally: but women feel just as men feel; they need exercise for their faculties, and a field for their efforts as much as their brothers do; they suffer from too rigid a restraint, too absolute a stagnation, precisely as men would suffer; and it is narrow-minded in their more privileged fellow-creatures to say that they ought to confine themselves to making puddings and knitting stockings, to playing on the piano and embroidering bags. It is thoughtless to condemn them, or laugh at them, if they seek to do more or learn more than custom has pronounced necessary for their sex.

14 Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre, Penguin Books, 1966, p. 281

Another central theme is the contrast between reason and passion. Jane, who has a passionate character, has a constant relationship with God, fighting between the two extremes, reason and passion, for most part of the novel. An example of her fight between reason and passion can be seen when she is to become a mistress. Before that moment, Jane had replaced the man she loved with God. When she realizes her feelings, she does her best to refuse what she most loves and desires. She runs away from temptation, following her principles.

The writer then expresses her thoughts about the role of the woman in the Victorian Age and especially Jane’s independence and skilfulness to make her own decisions. She doesn’t like to be indebted to others and she will not have others be indebted to her. She will also be torn between marrying and becoming dependent on a man or remaining free. Even when she accepts to marry, she will refuse any single gift that can embarrass her and indebt her. Moreover, Jane will want to continue teaching after she is married, as if to repay whatever Rochester can offer her. For this reason, when she finds out that she has a distant relative who wants to leave her a fortune, she will not hesitate,