How has the portrayal of illness, including mental illness, changed between Victorian literature and modern literature?

The Victorian era saw a severe rise in the number of people being committed to insane asylums, partly as a result of the great amount of repressive social and historical change which was coming about during this period. At this time there was also a great deal of poverty which led to many physical illnesses because of overcrowding, poor nutrition and low sanitation levels. Victorian literature rarely discusses how the illness was developed, and often only alludes to its development, as it focuses much more on its effects. On the other hand, modern literature often discusses how these diseases are developed and tracks their development explicitly as well as highlighting its effects. This difference results from the fact that in the Victorian era much less was understood medically about both physical and mental diseases, so there was not as much material for Victorian authors to work with without making up untruths.

            Firstly, Emily Bronte in Wuthering Heights uses characters which clearly are not mentally or physically stable. Cathy appears to suffer from schizophrenia as her mental health starts to decline from a very early age, resulting in her hallucinating towards her death and believing in her own delusions. This illness is portrayed in a way which makes Cathy seem not only scary, but also devilish. During the Victorian era there was thought to be a link between sin and illness, especially mental illness; this explains why Bronte chooses to expose Cathy’s illness with negative imagery. Similarly, Heathcliff shows signs of depression: he weeps often, he loses interest in eating and sleeping, loses interest in social contact and at one point self-harms. Again, Heathcliff is a devilish figure. Bronte does not highlight the development of these illnesses or expose any reason behind why these characters are acting in this way, nor does she talk about their symptoms in any real detail. This seeming lack of interest in discussing the mental illness and how it affects the character may come out of the fact that mental illnesses were not deemed to be as important then as they are now: contemporary readers would likely not have wanted any greater analysis of Cathy and Heathcliff’s disorders.

On the other hand, modern literature discusses mental illnesses to a much greater extent. This is because the increase in medical work on them over the past hundred years or so has raised greater awareness of their existence as well as raising a greater level of understanding of them in the wider public. Ned Vizzini exposes the intricacies of a variety of different mental illnesses in his It’s Kind of a Funny Story. He was able to write such an accurate portrayal of these as a result of his own time spent in a psychiatric ward because of his severe depression. He was informed a great deal about the illness itself and used his own feelings and experiences to accurately portray what living with a mental illness is like. Unlike Bronte, he openly examines what factors can cause the development of a mental illness, the manifestations it can take as it develops and a variety of outcomes which can occur as a result of it.

Furthermore, there is a high lack of interest in the deaths of characters in Victorian fiction due to physical illnesses. Bronte barely remarks on Cathy’s death: one only knows that she is gone and her daughter is alive, whilst nobody witnesses Heathcliff’s death or knows the true reasoning for it. Moreover, in Gaskell’s North and South Bessy Higgins’ death, which is one of many deaths in the novel is described in a great amount of detail, but only in terms of her actions, thoughts and words during the time; there is only a little description of the convulsions which her body suffers from leading up to her death.

On the other hand, John Green in writing his modern novel The Fault in Our Stars exposes the causes, developments and results of having a serious physical illness. His exposition of how it feels to be a teenager with cancer touches the heart of many teenagers because they can relate to these characters in a way in which the Victorian literature discussed does not allow them to. Not only is the development of this illness portrayed in an accurate way, but the return of Augustus’ cancer (sorry, spoilers) exposes the complications of being a cancer survivor. The clear and detailed description of the decline in his health, written from the perspective of another cancer sufferer exposes the reality of this illness. Moreover, the grim reality of his death in that it does not occur at the end of the novel, but part way through, serves to remind the reader that when one dies that is not the end of the influence their illness has had: it affects many other people for a very long time. 

A Comment Upon Love Triangles in Victorian Literature

Most of us are accustomed to love triangles as being a standard part of the majority of modern romantic comedy films, however this has been around for considerably longer than originally thought. Although it has been used by writers (or poets as they were known in Ancient times) since Ancient Greek literature the development of feminist perspectives in the Victorian era allows it to take on a new meaning.

            There are clearly two ways Victorian writers create love triangles: two men vying for a woman’s affections, or two women vying for a man’s. Which one they choose depends on the particular representation of the two genders that they are trying to evince in their writing. Emily Bronte explores gender through this type of love rivalry in Wuthering Heights in a particularly interesting way as she utilises both of the above forms and does so in a way that makes the reader sympathetic towards women as well as making them strong characters. Cathy Earnshaw is sought after by two men (Heathcliff and Edgar Linton) and is free to make her own decision regarding her future husband. This commences well until Cathy is forced by Heathcliff to realise that in marrying Linton she has defied her true nature which is bound to him. The mental turmoil she then succumbs to eventually leads to her death as she cannot lie with this inner tension. Thus, although Bronte creates Cathy as a seemingly independent, strong woman her death is induced by the power this love triangle has over her. Indeed, this book has another triangle in which the wrong choice is made, however this time not unwittingly. This is between Heathcliff, Cathy and Isabella Linton. Heathcliff’s intentional abuse of Isabella’s feelings in marrying her to secure property and because he cannot marry Cathy (thus making her the second choice) serves as an example of the cruelty of men in the art of love in the Victorian era.

            Another writer who particularly likes the use of love triangles is Thomas Hardy. Both Tess of the D’Ubervilles and Far From the Madding Crowd explore the nature of men through their differing attitudes towards love. Hardy uses this arrangement to comment socially upon the transition between traditional ways and the coming of the “Golden Age”. In Tess the contrast between the new age and the old is highlighted with the characters of Angel and Alec D’Uberville. Although there is this foundational contrast between the two they are both morally corrupt, which highlights the fact that neither traditional ideals nor modern ones are morally and socially appropriate; perhaps an amalgamation of the two is more ideal. Thus Hardy utilises the love triangle between these two men and Tess to not only explore the social context of womanhood in the late 1800s but also that of masculinity in a sexual context.

            Furthermore, Austen uses this form of relationship struggle to highlight the way in which a woman ought to behave in her novel Mansfield Park. Fanny Price and Mary Crawford vie for Edmund Bertram’s attention, but in the end Fanny secures the position of being his wife because of her inner purity and piety. Austen here socially condemns the modern way of life with drinking, gambling and doing perverse things in large towns, especially London. Mary’s character ensconces immorality at a simplistic life with her utter refutation of religion as well as leading a nice, rural life. Thus, this love triangle exposes the idea that cohering to modern ideals will not secure you a lover; you must stay true to being good.

To conclude, at the centre of these and many other Victorian love triangles I have not mentioned is not love. Instead these authors are exposing that to secure what one strives for in life (that is, a life partner in those days) one must have a keen moral sensibility and use it to do what is socially, as well as religiously, correct.

Eating disorders as a form of suppression in Literature: outdated Victorian form of control or a modern one?

For this week’s blog I was inspired by a recent article called “5 reasons to date a girl with an eating disorder”, placed up on an internet forum which I’m sure has incited many to anger. This article outlines what the “author” believes to be perfectly acceptable reasons for choosing a girl suffering in this way over others: she is good at sex, she costs men less money, she is often rich, she is vulnerable and she will be more likely stay thin and “pretty” than other girls. Not only does this have the potential to encourage or “trigger” many girls to furthering their own disorders, or subliminally placing the idea into their unconscious, but it also adheres to antiquarian views on women.

When one considers the Victorian novel, in particular upper-class Victorian women, one cannot help but construct the image of a fainting, pathetic figure falling into the arms of a sturdy man. Literature has progressed from this ideal, however society doesn’t seem to have done so.

Wuthering Heights is a key example of the wasting-away of a woman until her death in Victorian fiction. This form of death is alluded to in many novels from this period, without much thought being given to it by the modern reader. However, in this case, as well as more discreetly, Cathy, the key female character in the novel, reaches a point of hysteria (“coincidentally” driven to this by men) at which point she breaks down and refuses to eat. This mission of starvation incapacitates her to such an extent that she never recovers. Her fragile and vulnerable state does indeed endear her rival lovers to her, but not because she is somehow more attractive, but because they know it will kill her. This novel is over 100 years old and yet manages to understand the concept of an eating disorder better than the modern understanding in that article.

Indeed, modern literature has moved away from the idealisation of a skinny white woman and has begun to accept people of all sizes as attractive. A key example of this is in Delillo’s White Noise (published 1986). The key protagonist’s descriptions of his wife are nearly always concerned with her socially “unacceptable” size as she is overweight. However, this does not paint her in a negative light; she is beautiful. All of his descriptions of her size come paired with his lust for her body and her mind intertwined to create who she is as a person.

This is where modern texts and thoughts should be situated, in a place in which size does not matter in terms of the integrity of a person. Jack, the protagonist mentioned above, has also married several other people whose weight has not been discussed. This is because the author understands the modern world: someone’s weight is not a necessary factor in who they are. The important point about women and their shape in this text is that it is transient: women can be who they want to be and for as long as they want to be. It is not down to men to categorize whether a woman’s weight is “good” or not, it is up to women to have that control.

This is an example of how modern fiction has moved away from the physical constrictions on women of the Victorian era. Not only are women free to utilise their bodies sexually in the way in which they desire, but they also should be free to develop their bodies in the way in which they desire. Neither should they, nor would they, have to be constrained in an ideal modern world, however social constraints, particularly those enforced by males, as well as the marketing industry are attempting to trap women of our generation once again and thus are unfortunately subverting the literary move towards a modern representation of women.