In this paper, I will explore the concept of hysteria, specifically madness, in Victorian England by analyzing two representations of a hysterical woman in literature: first, the character of Bertha Rochester in Charlotte Bront's Jane Eyre, and second, the same character revisioned in Jean Rhys's Wide Sargasso Sea.
I will use Elaine Showalter's The Female Malady to provide the historical context of hysteria in Victorian England. Then, I will explore the "evidence" for Bertha's madness in Bront's Jane Eyre. Next, I will explore the characterization of "Bertha" in Wide Sargasso Sea and unpack the (re)contextualization of the causes for Bertha's hysteria. In altering the cause of Bertha's madness, Rhys shifts the focus from Bertha's hysteria to Rochester's treatment of her the same shift Showalter makes when moving from descriptions of the hysteric patient to the theory and practise of Victorian psychiatry.
Ultimately, I assert that Rhys's revision of Bront's novel parallels Showalter's critique of Victorian psychiatry: while the symptoms the hysteric experiences may be real, the cause for such symptoms are a product of the restraint of women in Victorian England rather than a biological flaw of women's propensity toward hysteria, known as the female malady.
In part one of her famous text The Female Malady, Elaine Showalter focuses on the perceptions and treatment of madness in Victorian England. What emerged in this place and at this time is a view of madness as a "female malady" not only statistically (for there were more women in asylums than men), but also ideologically: that there is an equation of femininity and insanity "that goes beyond statistical evidence or the social conditions of women." In part one of her study, Showalter dates psychiatric Victorianism from 1830 to 1870. Within psychiatric Victorianism, madness is seen as having moral causes and, therefore, requires moral management, which can only occur within moral architecture of the asylum.
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The concept "moral insanity," introduced in 1835 by James Prichard, considers madness to no longer be a lack of reason but deviance from socially accepted behaviour.
For women, this means any "beastly behaviour," such as shouting and sexual promiscuity. Women are seen to be "more vulnerable to insanity than men because the instability of their reproductive systems interfered with their sexual, emotional, and rational control." Thus, a link between female insanity (as part of the nervous system) and as woman's biology (the reproductive system) was forged in this time.
Moral management was concerned with abolishing the use of physical restraint and acting with "paternal concern" for the patient, which included isolation as well as having work in a trade suitable to their sex. While physical exercise and manual labour were prescribed for male patients, social activities and decorum were designated for female patients.
The management of female patient's included hav...
