“Drive me mad!”: An Intersectional Analysis of Madness in Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre

Abstract: Many depictions of mad characters in Victorian literature contribute to the gendering of mental illness. Because madness and hysteria, especially, were often feminized, being labeled as mentally unstable was often dangerous for women who could not successfully perform conservative gender standards. Additionally, men who were considered to be mad were often emasculated for not being able to portray the logical, unfeeling masculinity that was expected of them. A more complete study on madness in Victorian era literature, therefore, should focus on not only gender but also race and class. Viewing mental instability through an intersectional lens enables a better understanding of all the struggles of those who were “mad” faced in asylums and their day-to-day lives. Examining Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights and Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre through an intersectional lens will illustrate how gender, class, and race all contributed to the multiple characterizations of the mentally ill in Victorian literature. Although the male and female characters manifest different types of mental instability, clinical and episodic, their madness frequently appears to be a consequence of social ostracization. Characters like Heathcliff, Cathy, and Bertha experience a dramatic decline in their mental health throughout their respective novels, which could possibly be tied to the social pressures that attempt to trap them into Victorian gender, class, and racial roles. Ultimately, failure to conform and societal isolation greatly affect the characters of these novels, causing mental breaks and even leading to many of their deaths.

Also available on the University of Arizona’s UROC-SRI Abstract Review.