Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-q99xh Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-26T06:45:55.708Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

TENDING TO OLD STORIES: DANIEL DERONDA AND HYSTERIA, REVISITED

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 May 2018

Doreen Thierauf
Doreen Thierauf*
Affiliation:
The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

The appearance of the word ‘dynamic’ on the first page of George Eliot's novel, Daniel Deronda (1876), to describe Gwendolen's unsettled/unsettling glance famously elicited critique from her publisher John Blackwood as well as from an anonymous reviewer at the Examiner, both of whom challenged Eliot's use of scientific jargon that had not yet entered her audience's everyday vocabulary. In line with this often-cited vignette, critics usually understand Eliot to respond thoughtfully and prophetically to late-nineteenth-century scientific trends. In the words of the Examiner reviewer, Eliot's “culture is scientific” (“New Novel” 125), probably more so than any other Victorian novelist's. Studies investigating the reciprocal relationship between Eliot's fiction, particularly Middlemarch and Daniel Deronda, and nineteenth-century scientific writing suggest her familiarity with notable works by Henry Lewes, Alexander Bain, William Carpenter, Charles Darwin, Herbert Spencer, James Sully, and others. Scholarship of the past three decades has largely focused on Eliot's application of Victorian theories regarding epistemology, evolution, and the relationship between mind and body. However, scholars have not yet fully examined Eliot's utilization of mid-nineteenth-century medical knowledge concerning the female body's proneness to hysteria, a connection that emerges prominently in her final novel.

Type
Research Article
Information
Victorian Literature and Culture , Volume 46 , Issue 2 , June 2018 , pp. 443 - 465
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2018 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

WORKS CITED

Baker, William. The George Eliot-George Henry Lewes Library: An Annotated Catalogue of Their Books at Dr. Williams Library, London. New York: Garland, 1977.Google Scholar
Beer, Gillian. Darwin's Plots: Evolutionary Narrative in Darwin, George Eliot and Nineteenth-Century Fiction. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2009 [1983].CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brown, Isaac Baker. On the Curability of Certain Forms of Insanity, Epilepsy, Catalepsy, and Hysteria in Females. London: Robert Hardwicke, 1866.Google Scholar
Carter, Robert Brudenell. On the Pathology and Treatment of Hysteria. London: John Churchill, 1853.Google Scholar
David, Deirdre. Fictions of Resolution in Three Victorian Novels: North and South, Our Mutual Friend, Daniel Deronda. New York: Columbia UP, 1981.Google Scholar
Davis, Michael. George Eliot and Nineteenth-Century Psychology. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2006.Google Scholar
Dowling, Andrew. “‘The Other Side of Silence’: Matrimonial Conflict and the Divorce Court in George Eliot's Fiction.” Nineteenth-Century Literature 50.3 (1995): 322–36.Google Scholar
During, Simon. “The Strange Case of Monomania: Patriarchy in Literature, Murder in Middlemarch, Drowning in Daniel Deronda.” Representations 23 (1988): 86–104.Google Scholar
Eliot, George. Daniel Deronda. New York: Oxford UP, 1998.Google Scholar
Eliot, George. The George Eliot Letters. Edited by Haight, G. S.. 9 vols. New Haven: Yale UP, 1954–78.Google Scholar
Eliot, George. Middlemarch. New York: Oxford UP, 2008.Google Scholar
Ender, Evelyne. Sexing the Mind: Nineteenth-Century Fictions of Hysteria. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1995.Google Scholar
Ferrier, David. The Functions of the Brain. London: Smith, Elder & Co., 1876.Google Scholar
Finn, Michael R. Hysteria, Hypnotism, the Spirits, and Pornography: Fin-de-siècle Cultural Discourses in the Decadent Rachilde. Newark: U of Delaware P, 2009.Google Scholar
Foucault, Michel. The History of Sexuality. Vol. 1. New York: Vintage, 1978.Google Scholar
Greg, William Rathbone. “Why Are Women Redundant?” The National Review 28 (Apr. 1862): 434–60.Google Scholar
Griesinger, Wilhelm. Gesammelte Abhandlungen. Vol. 1. Berlin: Verlag von August Hirschwald, 1872.Google Scholar
Griesinger, Wilhelm. Mental Pathology and Therapeutics. London: New Sydenham Society, 1867.Google Scholar
Henry, Nancy. The Life of George Eliot: A Critical Biography. Chichester, West Sussex: Wiley-Blackwell, 2012.Google Scholar
Herzog, Annabel. “Tale of Two Secrets. A Rereading of Daniel Deronda.” Differences 16.2 (2005): 37–60.Google Scholar
Irwin, Jane, ed. George Eliot's Daniel Deronda Notebooks. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1996.Google Scholar
Laqueur, Thomas. “Orgasm, Generation, and the Politics of Reproductive Biology.” Representations 14 (1986): 1–41.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Laycock, Thomas. A Treatise on the Nervous Disease of Women. London: Longman, Orme, Brown, Green, and Longmans, 1840.Google Scholar
Maines, Rachel P. The Technology of Orgasm: ‘Hysteria,’ the Vibrator, and Women's Sexual Satisfaction. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins UP, 1999.Google Scholar
Malane, Rachel Ann. Sex in Mind: The Gendered Brain in Nineteenth-Century Literature and Mental Sciences. New York: Peter Lang, 2005.Google Scholar
Mason, Diane. The Secret Vice: Masturbation in Victorian Fiction and Medical Culture. Manchester: Manchester UP, 2008.Google Scholar
Matus, Jill. “Historicizing Trauma: The Genealogy of Psychic Shock in Daniel Deronda.” Victorian Literature and Culture 36.1 (2008): 59–78.Google Scholar
Maudsley, Henry. The Physiology and Pathology of the Mind. New York: D. Appleton and Company, 1867.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Maudsley, Henry. The Physiology of Mind. London: Macmillan and Co., 1876.Google Scholar
Maudsley, Henry. “Sex in Mind and Education.” Fortnightly Review 15.88 (Apr. 1874): 466–83.Google Scholar
Micale, Mark. Approaching Hysteria: Disease and Its Interpretations. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1995.Google Scholar
Mitchell, Rebecca N. “The Rosamond Plots: Alterity and the Unknown in Jane Eyre and Middlemarch.” Nineteenth-Century Literature 66.3 (2011): 307–27.Google Scholar
Moscucci, Ornella. “Clitoridectomy, Circumcision, and the Politics of Sexual Pleasure in Mid-Victorian Britain.” Sexualities in Victorian Britain. Ed. Miller, Andrew H. and Adams, James Eli. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1996. 60–78.Google Scholar
Nelson, Heather. “‘Nothing That She Could Allege Against Him in Judicious or Judicial Ears’: ‘Consensual’ Marital Abuse in Victorian Literature.” George Eliot-George Henry Lewes Studies 69.1 (2017): 89–119.Google Scholar
“A New Novel by George Eliot.” Examiner 3548 (29 Jan. 1876): 124–25.Google Scholar
Nichols, Thomas Low. Esoteric Anthropology: The Mysteries of Man. Malvern: T. L. Nichols, 1873.Google Scholar
Paget, James. Clinical Lectures and Essays. Ed. Marsh, Howard. New York: D. Appleton and Co., 1875.Google Scholar
Penner, Louise. “‘Unmapped Country’: Uncovering Hidden Wounds in Daniel Deronda.” Victorian Literature and Culture 30.1 (2002): 77–97.Google Scholar
Peterson, Kaara. Popular Medicine, Hysterical Disease, and Social Controversy in Shakespeare's England. Burlington: Ashgate, 2010.Google Scholar
Reimer, Margaret Loewen. “The Spoiled Child: What Happened to Gwendolen Harleth?” The Cambridge Quarterly 36.1 (2007): 34–50.Google Scholar
Romberg, Moritz Heinrich. A Manual of the Nervous Diseases of Man. Vol. 2. London: Sydenham Society, 1853.Google Scholar
Rothfield, Lawrence. Vital Signs: Medical Realism in Nineteenth-Century Fiction. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1992.Google Scholar
Sedgwick, Eve Kosofsky. “Jane Austen and the Masturbating Girl.” Critical Inquiry 17.4 (1991): 818–37.Google Scholar
Shuttleworth, Sally. George Eliot and Nineteenth-Century Science: The Make-Believe of a Beginning. New York: Cambridge UP, 1984.Google Scholar
Stengers, Jean. Masturbation: The History of a Great Terror. New York: Palgrave, 2001.Google Scholar
Thierauf, Doreen. “Daniel Deronda and the End of Reproduction.” Victorian Review 43.2 (Fall 2017).Google Scholar
Thierauf, Doreen. “The Hidden Abortion Plot in George Eliot's Middlemarch.” Victorian Studies 56.3 (2014): 479–89.Google Scholar
Trall, Russell Thacher. Pathology of the Reproductive Organs: Embracing All Forms of Sexual Disorder. Boston: B. Emerson, 1853.Google Scholar
Tromp, Marlene. “Gwendolen's Madness.” Victorian Literature and Culture 28.2 (2000): 451–67.Google Scholar
Trotter, David. “The Invention of Agoraphobia.” Victorian Literature and Culture 32.2 (2004): 463–74.Google Scholar
Veith, Ilza. Hysteria: The History of a Disease. Chicago: Chicago UP, 1965.Google Scholar
Vrettos, Athena. “From Neurosis to Narrative: The Private Life of the Nerves in Villette and Daniel Deronda.” Victorian Studies 33.4 (1990): 551–79.Google ScholarPubMed
Weisser, Susan Ostrov. “Gwendolen's Hidden Wound: Sexual Possibilities and Impossibilities in Daniel Deronda.” Modern Language Studies 20.3 (1990): 3–13.
Wilt, Judith. “‘He Would Come Back’: The Fathers and Daughters in Daniel Deronda.” Nineteenth-Century Literature 42.3 (1987): 313–38.Google Scholar
“Women's Education.” Fraser's Magazine 73 (May 1869): 537–52.Google Scholar
Wood, Jane. Passion and Pathology in Victorian Fiction. New York: Oxford UP, 2001.Google Scholar
Zimmerman, Bonnie. “Gwendolen Harleth and ‘The Girl of the Period.’” George Eliot: Centenary Essays and an Unpublished Fragment. Ed. Smith, Anne. London: Vision Press, 1980. 196–217.Google Scholar