"There is sex in mind" : scientific determinism and the woman question in Lady Audley's Secret

Title: "There is sex in mind" : scientific determinism and the woman question in Lady Audley's Secret
Source document: Brno studies in English. 2012, vol. 38, iss. 1, pp. [87]-102
Extent
[87]-102
  • ISSN
    0524-6881 (print)
    1805-0867 (online)
Type: Article
Language
License: Not specified license
 

Notice: These citations are automatically created and might not follow citation rules properly.

Abstract(s)
My contention in this paper is that in Lady Audley's Secret Elizabeth Braddon is critical of the nineteenth-century theories of cerebral and biological determinism in relation to the question of female madness. I argue in the first part that Braddon pinpoints phrenology – the study of the faculties of the mind from the conformation of the skull – as one of the institutionalized sciences that provided a materialistic underpinning and a further incentive to masculine hegemony. After I outline the basic tenets of the theory I shall argue that as a subject of phrenological analysis, the madwoman is treated in ways that reproduce Victorian gender-normative stereotypes. In the second part I shall demonstrate that marriage is denounced as an institution that bolsters the hegemonic machine.
References
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