Medicine and women's fiction : hysteria, bodies and narratives, 1850s to 1930s / Louise Benson James

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Benson James, Louise, author.

Series:

Gender and the body in literature and culture

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

English fiction--Women authors--History and criticism.

English fiction.

English fiction--19th century--History and criticism.

English fiction--20th century--History and criticism.

Hysteria in literature.

Literature and medicine.

Women in literature.

English fiction--Women authors.

Genre:

Criticism, interpretation, etc.

Physical Description:

1 online resource

Place of Publication:

Edinburgh : Edinburgh University Press, [2026]

Summary:

"This book looks afresh at the history of hysteria to nuance and complicate existing understandings of the relationship between medicine and women’s writing. Through in-depth analyses of both medical texts and women’s fiction published between the 1850s and 1930s, it documents the prevalence of scientific ideas in popular culture and how hysterical symptomatology has been appropriated, reworked and satirised in literature. Examining novels and short stories by Charlotte Brontë, Rhoda Broughton, Sarah Grand, Lucas Malet and Djuna Barnes, emMedicine and Women’s Fiction/em traces women writers’ fascination with the materiality and instability of the body, troubling inherited truths about mental health and gender in literary and medical discourse. In contrast to stereotypical images of hysteria, it draws particular attention to disorder as part of everyday experience: the familiar, mundane ways in which the body goes out of control, from involuntary movements to ghostly hallucinations and unruly organs. Altogether, Louise Benson James re-evaluates what it means to take hysteria seriously in fiction"-- JSTOR

Contents:

Introduction : treating the hysterical body

Nervous narratives : Charlotte Brontë, Villette (1853) and mid-century medical men

Unruly bodies : Rhoda Broughton’s Nancy (1873) and short supernatural fiction

Mental monstrosities, medical women and material culture : Sarah Grand’s The heavenly twins (1893) and The Beth book (1897)

Sexual neuroses and male nerves : Lucas Malet’s Wages of sin (1891) and The survivors (1923)

Medical mythmaking, modern science and the taboo : Djuna Barnes’s Ryder (1928) and Nightwood (1936)

Conclusion : ‘How shall I keep well?’

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index

Online resource; title from PDF title page (JSTOR, viewed June 24, 2026)

Other Format:

Print version: Benson James, Louise Medicine and women's fiction

ISBN:

9781399523110

1399523112

9781399523103

1399523104

OCLC:

1579001513

Publisher Number:

CIPO000350575

Access Restriction:

Restricted for use by site license