Charlotte Brontë and Victorian Psychology

Charlotte Brontë's fiction is examined in the context of Victorian constructions of psychology, sexuality, and insanity.

Sally Shuttleworth (Author)

9780521551496, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 7 March 1996

308 pages, 1 b/w illus.
23.6 x 15.4 x 2.8 cm, 0.655 kg

'An impressive, densely-argued book.' Journal of Victorian Culture

This innovative and critically acclaimed study successfully challenges the traditional view that Charlotte Brontë existed in a historical vacuum, by setting her work firmly within the context of Victorian psychological debate. Based on extensive local research, using texts ranging from local newspaper copy to the medical tomes in the Reverend Patrick Brontë's library, Sally Shuttleworth explores the interpenetration of economic, social, and psychological discourse in the early and mid-nineteenth century, and traces the ways in which Charlotte Brontë's texts operate in relation to this complex, often contradictory, discursive framework. Shuttleworth offers a detailed analysis of Brontë's fiction, informed by a new understanding of Victorian constructions of sexuality and insanity, and the operations of medical and psychological surveillance.

Acknowledgements
Introduction
Part I. Psychological Discourse in the Victorian Era: 1. The art of surveillance
2. The Haworth context
3. Insanity and selfhood
4. Reading the mind: physiognomy and phrenology
5. The female bodily economy
Part II. Charlotte Brontës Fiction: 6. The early writings: penetrating power
7. The Professor: 'the art of self-control'
8. Jane Eyre: 'lurid hieroglyphics'
9. Shirley: bodies and markets
10. Villette: 'the surveillance of a sleepless eye'
Conclusion
Notes
Index.

Subject Areas: Literary studies: fiction, novelists & prose writers [DSK]