“‘It may be the extreme of mortal misery’”:
Images of psychological crises in Charlotte Brontë’s Villette
Charlotte Brontë’s final novel Villette (1853) has long been read in terms of its portrayal of the inner life and the history of psychology. The notions of hypochondria and monomania play a central role in the portrayal of the protagonist Lucy Snowe, for example when the male doctor in the novel describes her mind as “‘a chamber of torture’” (17.183). The text both reflects and offers re-imaginings of contemporary ideas of the mind and mental illness, thereby drawing a more sophisticated picture of the inner workings of the psyche than some of the psychological literature of the day, such as William Carpenter’s notion of “Human Automatism” in his 1876 Principles of Mental Physiology (quoted in Matus 1260).
In Villette, allegories and symbols often take the place of direct descriptions of a state of mind or emotions, a representational strategy which allows for great complexity and even ambiguity.
My paper examines the images used to represent the mind in terms of inside and outside, the surface and what lies beneath, and how the seemingly simple dualism of these concepts is called into question in some of the key scenes, in particular the shipwreck allegory. The representation of hypochondria in the novel does not fully subscribe to the mainstream psychological discourse of the day but rather undermines it in subtle ways, for example when Lucy Snowe herself claims to be “‘constitutionally nervous’” (31.367) in a conversation with M. Paul about the appearance of the nun, which is a central image associated with the threat of mental illness.
Lucy’s mental states of extreme crisis also affect her physically, as shown in her ambivalent relationship to food and drink (expressed in her “dram-drink[ing]” (21.231) of ice-cold water to allay her inner unrest).
Finally, the link between an (over)active imagination and mental illness is considered in light of the fact that Lucy is portrayed as the writer of her own autobiography, creating a multiplicity of images to portray her inner life, at a time when imaginative daydreaming was connected with the threat of mental illness (see Tressler 1).
Matus notes that “[b]y 1850 the term ‘psychology’ was for the first time in common use” (1260), and points out that because of a lack of a clearly demarcated psychological science, “a great deal of the fictive literature of the period might also be understood as psychological writing” (1260). My paper argues that Villette can be usefully considered in this context.
Primary source
Brontë, Charlotte. Villette. 1853. Ed. Margaret Smith and Herbert Rosengarten. Oxford: OUP, 2000. Print.
Secondary sources
Matus, Jill L. “Victorian Framings of the Mind: Recent Work on Mid-Nineteenth Century Theories of the Unconscious, Memory, and Emotion.” Literature Compass 4.4 (2007): 1257–1276. Online.
Shuttleworth, Sally. Charlotte Brontë and Victorian Psychology. Cambridge: CUP, 1996. Print.
Torgerson, Beth. “Hysteria, Female Desire, and Self-Control in Villette.” In: Reading the Brontë Body: Disease, Desire and the Constraints of Culture. Palgrave Macmillan, 2005. 59-88. Online.
Tressler, Beth. “Illegible Minds: Charlotte Brontë’s Early Writings and the Psychology of Moral Management in Jane Eyre and Villette.” Studies in the Novel 47.1 (Spring 2015): 1-19. Print.