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

Vol.38,No.1(2012)

Ihsen Hachaichi

https://doi.org/10.5817/BSE2012-1-6

Stable URL (handle):
http://hdl.handle.net/11222.digilib/124306

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Abstract
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.

Keywords:
phenology; female madness; science of the mind; Braddon; Lady Audley's Secret; marriage

Pages:
87–102
References

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