Halloween History: Gothic Horror Story or Victorian Woman’s Reality?

Victorian Gothic Author Essie Fox

Although I am taking a break from doing my regular blog posts, I am going to be posting links to some of the awesome guest posts I'm doing to promote my Halloween $0.99 cent sale of A White Room. They are all very Unhinged Historian type stuff, so enjoy the posts and enjoy getting to see some new blogs out there that are totally your style. If you like this whacked out blog, then you will love these blogs which are way nicer than this one in my opinion. =)

Today, I want you to check out Victorian Gothic author Essie Fox's website (it's one of the best website designs I've seen BTW) and blog The Virtual Victorian where she has kindly let me post about the historical context of the Victorian Gothic short story "The Yellow Wallpaper" written by Charlotte Perkins Gilman in the late 1890s. Some people read the story and think it's just horror, but they don't realize it's actually a feminist message regarding women's status in the Victorian Era and the flawed beliefs surrounding Hysteria. This isn't a run of the mill going over the basics either. It's an in depth article on the topic.

Essie Fox's Victorian Gothic Novel Somnambulist

Also, I highly recommend you check out Essie Fox's Gothic novels because they are something really special and definite must reads for Halloween! Perfect for RIP VIII reading challenge!

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Here is a sneak peak of my guest post but you will need to visit Essie Fox's The Virtual Victorian to read the entire thing. Enjoy!

A Horror Story or a Message?

Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s story “The Yellow Wallpaper” was published in a magazine in the early 1890s. At first glance, many readers, both past and present, see a scary story of either a haunted house or a situation of pure insanity, both of which are elements of Gothic fiction. “The Yellow Wallpaper” is considered a part of the Victorian Gothic and horror genre, but it is much more than that.

The story was inspired by Gilman’s own experiences after seeking help for her “nervousness” and “melancholia” from the famous neurologist S. Weir Mitchell, who was known for his “rest cure”

treatment for hysteria. Read what Charlotte Perkins Gilman herself said about her story “The Yellow Wallpaper.”

Historians now look to Gilman’s short story as one of the most revealing inside looks at the experience of a woman diagnosed and treated as a hysteric during the late nineteenth century. Since Gilman was also a feminist with very public ideas regarding her views, this work is also seen as a look into how feminism may have developed during a time when hysteria was being diagnosed on epidemic levels.

What was Hysteria to the Victorians?

Hysteria evolved out of Ancient Greece with theories regarding a woman’s uterus having the ability to wonder the body and affect the brain, an idea that prevailed into the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In fact the smelling salts Victorian women used to prevent themselves from swooning were believed to frighten the uterus away from that area of the body.

Throughout the century, hysteria was commonly associated with nervous or anxious tendencies such as fainting. However, by the late Victorian Era, there were a massive amount of symptoms associated with the condition known as hysteria, and women were diagnosed no matter how unique their actual situation. In many cases, men and women used it as an explanation for any kind of unwanted or erratic female behavior, especially emotional behavior.

There were also a wide variety of cures, including the rest cure (used in “The Yellow Wallpaper”), the water cure, vigorous exercise, vaginal stimulation*, hypnosis (Jean-Martin Charcot), and the beginnings of talk therapy and psychoanalytic analysis (Sigmund Freud). Due to Freud’s work, much of the research on hysteria has had an impact on modern psychology.

*A note on vaginal stimulation. Although many articles focus on the invention of the electric vibrator and the use to create a female orgasm as a treatment for hysteria, this was not the major impact of the hysterical movement on women or society. It did not contribute to any further understanding of female sexuality at the time. The idea of a woman being flawed if unable to climax through penetration prevailed even into the late twentieth century.

Hysteria and the Women’s Movement

In many ways the hysteria movement reflected and or embodied certain problems ...

Read the rest of the post on Essie Fox's The Virtual Victorian!

About Stephanie Carroll
Stephanie Carroll is the author of A White Room and "Forget Me Not" featured in Legacy: An Anthology. She blogs about magical realism, her research into the Victorian Era and Gilded Age, writing, and life in general at www.stephaniecarroll.net and at The Unhinged Historian. She also founded Unhinged and Empowered, a blog for Navy wives and girlfriends.

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