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Health, illness, and medical theory in the novels of Jane Austen, Charles Dickens, and Charlotte Bronte.

Record Type:	Electronic resources : Monograph/item
Title/Author:	Health, illness, and medical theory in the novels of Jane Austen, Charles Dickens, and Charlotte Bronte./
Author:	Babcox, Emilie Dorothy.
Description:	1 online resource (219 pages)
Notes:	Source: Dissertations Abstracts International, Volume: 60-05, Section: A.
Contained By:	Dissertations Abstracts International60-05A.
Subject:	British and Irish literature. -
Online resource:	http://pqdd.sinica.edu.tw/twdaoapp/servlet/advanced?query=9900629click for full text (PQDT)
ISBN:	9780591975390

Health, illness, and medical theory in the novels of Jane Austen, Charles Dickens, and Charlotte Bronte.
Babcox, Emilie Dorothy.

Health, illness, and medical theory in the novels of Jane Austen, Charles Dickens, and Charlotte Bronte. - 1 online resource (219 pages)

Source: Dissertations Abstracts International, Volume: 60-05, Section: A.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Rutgers The State University of New Jersey, School of Graduate Studies, 1998.

Includes bibliographical references

This study examines both scientific and popular constructions of health and illness in the novels of Austen, Dickens, and Bronte. In the first chapter I look at ideas of disease etiology prior to the widespread acceptance of the germ theory in the 1880s. For most of the nineteenth century, medicine was grounded in humoralism, and infectious illness was usually attributed to miasmatism. The moral, religious, and philosophical implications of humoralism and miasmatism are critical to an understanding of how nineteenth-century novelists "write illness." Jane Austen "writes illness" as an expression of anxiety about the financial and social dependence of her heroines; in addition, illness or the threat of illness is often used in her novels as a rationale for the spatial boundaries that define and constrict the movements of her characters. Dickens turns to illness in his novels to somatize a sexual anxiety that revolves around issues of parenting and caretaking. He also uses disease theory in his novels as a scientific rationale for his profound pessimism about social reformation. He also "writes illness" to signal moral conditions and changes in his characters--using, for example, conversion illnesses or the myth of the angelic consumptive. Bronte somatizes anxieties concerning autonomy, domination, and submission in the ailing bodies of her characters. Her novels demonstrate her belief in a strong correspondence between mental and physical illness, especially the origin of depression in constitutional and hereditary weakness. She uses rabies to illustrate moral and physical strength, as well as moral purity. Humoralism and miasmatism in the nineteenth-century novel are not just explanations of illness, but philosophical stances carrying a complex and often contradictory weight of moral, emotion, and often theological association. These associations lie behind a peculiarly Victorian preoccupation with health and disease, which is usually expressed in the form of redemptive or purgative illness narratives. Interpretations of illness narratives are complicated, however, by the fact that illness usually functions as an unstable trope within the texts, mirroring the confusion in Victorian society about the moral significance of disease theory.

Electronic reproduction.
Ann Arbor, Mich. :
ProQuest,
2023

Mode of access: World Wide Web

ISBN: 9780591975390Subjects--Topical Terms:

3433225
British and Irish literature.
Subjects--Index Terms:

Austen, JaneIndex Terms--Genre/Form:

542853
Electronic books.

Health, illness, and medical theory in the novels of Jane Austen, Charles Dickens, and Charlotte Bronte.
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502 $a Thesis (Ph.D.)--Rutgers The State University of New Jersey, School of Graduate Studies, 1998.
504 $a Includes bibliographical references
520 $a This study examines both scientific and popular constructions of health and illness in the novels of Austen, Dickens, and Bronte. In the first chapter I look at ideas of disease etiology prior to the widespread acceptance of the germ theory in the 1880s. For most of the nineteenth century, medicine was grounded in humoralism, and infectious illness was usually attributed to miasmatism. The moral, religious, and philosophical implications of humoralism and miasmatism are critical to an understanding of how nineteenth-century novelists "write illness." Jane Austen "writes illness" as an expression of anxiety about the financial and social dependence of her heroines; in addition, illness or the threat of illness is often used in her novels as a rationale for the spatial boundaries that define and constrict the movements of her characters. Dickens turns to illness in his novels to somatize a sexual anxiety that revolves around issues of parenting and caretaking. He also uses disease theory in his novels as a scientific rationale for his profound pessimism about social reformation. He also "writes illness" to signal moral conditions and changes in his characters--using, for example, conversion illnesses or the myth of the angelic consumptive. Bronte somatizes anxieties concerning autonomy, domination, and submission in the ailing bodies of her characters. Her novels demonstrate her belief in a strong correspondence between mental and physical illness, especially the origin of depression in constitutional and hereditary weakness. She uses rabies to illustrate moral and physical strength, as well as moral purity. Humoralism and miasmatism in the nineteenth-century novel are not just explanations of illness, but philosophical stances carrying a complex and often contradictory weight of moral, emotion, and often theological association. These associations lie behind a peculiarly Victorian preoccupation with health and disease, which is usually expressed in the form of redemptive or purgative illness narratives. Interpretations of illness narratives are complicated, however, by the fact that illness usually functions as an unstable trope within the texts, mirroring the confusion in Victorian society about the moral significance of disease theory.
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653 $a Bronte, Charlotte
653 $a Dickens, Charles
653 $a Health
653 $a Illness
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856 4 0 $u http://pqdd.sinica.edu.tw/twdaoapp/servlet/advanced?query=9900629 $z click for full text (PQDT)