Monomania: The Life and Death of a Psychiatric Idea in Nineteenth-Century Fiction 1836-1860 Lindsey Stewart 2018

https://www.academia.edu/105883480/Monomania_The_Life_and_Death_of_a_Psychiatric_Idea_in_Nineteenth_Century_Fiction_1836_1860?rhid=43001723889&swp=rr-rw-wc-176140890&nav_from=8f873933-853d-4c4c-9a7a-6c240882786c This thesis is about the nineteenth-century psychiatric idea, monomania, in medical, literary and popular discourse from 1836-1860. I examine patient case-notes from the Bethlem, York Retreat and Surrey County Pauper Asylum to establish that the experiential or 'real' narratives of monomaniacs confirm the category's initial confusion with melancholia, and then its conflation with social commentary. Used sparingly in clinical practice, physicians account for a range of anti-social behaviour with its deployment as a diagnosis. However, I argue that it is in the literature of the day that the idea is most widely celebrated. Demonstrating its variant, unstable meanings, the texts I read use monomania explicitly. They include works by the Brontë sisters, Elizabeth Gaskell and George Eliot, neglected thriller pieces by Dinah Craik, the pseudonymous 'Thomas Waters', and an anonymously authored story from The Ladies' Cabinet of Fashion, Music and Romance. These works...