Charlotte Bront毛 and Victorian Psychology by Sally Shuttleworth,
Cambridge University Press, 拢35/$54.95, ISBN 0 521 55149 8
IN THE early 19th century, the Poet Laureate Robert Southey wrote in reply to
a letter from the then unknown Charlotte Bront毛 that 鈥渓iterature cannot be
the business of a woman鈥檚 life . . . the daydreams in which you habitually
indulge are likely to induce a diseased state of mind鈥�. In spite of such
admonitions, and an awareness that behaviour deemed a sign of incipient insanity
could result in forcible committal to a lunatic asylum, she continued to
write.
In Charlotte Bront毛 and Victorian Psychology, Sally
Shuttleworth invokes primary sources to explode any persistent myths that
Bront毛 lived in a cultural vacuum, arguing that her writing was informed by
the economic and psychological discourse of the time.
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Through close analysis of Bront毛鈥檚 early work up to Villette
(1853), Shuttleworth explores the novelist鈥檚 preoccupation with the question of
self-determinism in a society riddled with contradictory images of femininity.
Self-help, a philosophy to which Bront毛 ardently subscribed, was widely
regarded as the surest way to personal autonomy and economic liberty. The fear
of losing control was widespread in the Victorian era, and this was particularly
associated with women.
Medical and psychological surveillance was encouraged as a means of detecting
undesirable elements among girls and women. Psychiatry and phrenology were
hailed as the means of decoding the hidden self. Because of the pressure to
reveal all, selfhood became associated with the individual鈥檚 capacity for
concealment.
In such a climate, it was not surprising that Bront毛 became preoccupied
with the paradox that the objective eye both creates and potentially destroys
individual identity. This, Shuttleworth argues, is crucial to the interpretation
of all Bront毛鈥檚 fiction, redefining the boundaries between normality and
rebellion.
In Jane Eyre (1847), Bront毛 questions the fine divide between
sanity and insanity. The 鈥渕ad woman in the attic鈥� impinges insidiously on the
mind of the eponymous heroine. Images of menstruation and madness are
interwoven, and Rochester鈥檚 incarcerated wife Bertha is ultimately portrayed as
鈥渋ntemperate and unchaste鈥�.