"Hysteria" and Jane Eyre
Renatta Gorski
In the Victorian era, the term “hysteria” was broad, typically used to label a woman suffering from a wide variety of symptoms. While today the term is used in a more singular sense to describe a fit of madness or a frenzy for either gender, in the nineteenth century female hysteria was a medical diagnosis applied in countless cases in which women were irritable, nervous, suffering fainting spells, having trouble sleeping, or were rejecting food. In his article, “Hysteria,” published in 1892, psychologist Horatio Bryan Donkin makes the claim that female hysteria was caused by cultural restraints that women were regularly faced with. In fact, he suggests that any form of stifled desire can cause hysteria. Victorian culture placed a lot of restraints on women, which, supposing Donkin’s claim to be accurate, explains the countless hysteria diagnoses. Though Donkin wrote his article in 1892, evidence of his claims can be found earlier in the era. For example, Charlotte Bronte’s titular character in her celebrated 1847 novel Jane Eyre exhibits symptoms of the Victorian diagnosis of female hysteria, particularly in light of Jane’s food refusal, or what would later be described as anorexia nervosa. Because anorexia was not diagnosed until later in the era, it was often considered a symptom of hysteria. Thus, Jane’s behavior, including symptoms of anorexia nervosa, would match Donkin’s description of hysteria in that it was a result of her stifled desires as well as cultural restraints imposed on her a Victorian woman.
As is consistent with other Victorian psychologists, Donkin notes that puberty and the development of sexual organs are correlated to the occurrence of female hysteria. In “Hysteria,” he suggests that after puberty, the female’s nervous system is unbalanced, which was commonly thought to be linked to hysterical symptoms. Donkin builds on this claim by noting that, although girls undergoing puberty naturally begin to develop sexual desires, they are unable to satisfy these inclinations due to societal constraints. Thus, he observes that many other Victorian psychologists “regard unsatisfied sexual desire as one of the leading causes of hysteria” (Donkin 197). Evidently, the popular belief was that prohibiting the body from gratifying its natural needs greatly affected the nervous system, which would consequently affect the mental state.
While Donkin clearly supported this widely held theory, he developed it further by suggesting that severe cases of hysteria occur in cases of “enforced abstinence from the gratification of any of the inherent and primitive desires” (Donkin 198). He later notes that, “There are clearly other stresses which render women especially liable to hysteria,” but he is primarily focused on the denial of satisfying one’s needs.
Although refusing gratification would afflict anybody, Donkin does posit that women are most frequently impacted, due both to their bodily constitutions, specifically the assumed weakness of the reproduction system, and to the Victorian expectations placed upon them. He points out that “’Thou shalt not’ meets a girl at almost every turn” (Donkin 197). According to A.K. Silver, author of Victorian Literature and the Anorexic Body, this observation is supported by the fact that the ideal Victorian woman was “one who submits her physical appetites… to her will” (Silver 27). Women who strove to meet the societal standards were undoubtedly focused not on what they did but rather on what they did not do. Donkin connects this cultural phenomenon by suggesting that abstaining from acting freely ultimately led women to exhibit certain behaviors that were at the time considered hysterical, such as refusing to eat or even an increase in sexual desire.
In his article, Donkin does not list specific behaviors but instead generalizes the typical attitudes that would be considered hysterical, thus leaving the definition of hysteria broad. He claims that, “the hysteric is pre-eminently an individualist, an unsocial unit, and fails in adaptation to organic surroundings (Donkin 198). Moreover, he notes that the hysterical female has either a deficiency or an excess of energy, which is “the result of the passion for sympathy or notoriety.” According to Donkin, many of the hysterical female’s abnormal actions, while being a result of repressed desires, are motivated by their want of attention. Though this cry for attention can be manifested through committing a crime, he notes that the hysterical woman may merely exaggerate her suffering in order to be noticed.
Although Donkin does not necessarily list distinct aspects of hysteria in his article, other Victorian psychologists believed that a wide number of symptoms fit under the scope of hysterical behavior. However, in his book From Fasting Saints to Anorexic Girls, Ron van Deth points out that the “unknown German physician Von Rein… described a case of hysteria in which food abstinence was one of the most prominent symptoms” (van Deth 130). Likewise, throughout the nineteenth century many people were “linking food abstinence to hysteria.” Although anorexia nervosa, or the act of starving oneself, was not medically established as a disease until 1873 by Sir William Gull, indications of anorexia were undoubtedly prevalent before and during the Victorian era. Because the actual term was not established until later in the century, physicians regarded self-starvation as “one of the manifold forms of hysteria” (van Deth 130).
Despite the lack of details in Donkin’s article, he would surely agree with the connection between abstinence from food and hysteria. Van Deth writes that “the motive of food refusal in these hysterical females can undoubtedly be attributed to their craving for attention from those around them,” which resonates with Donkin’s belief that hysterical actions were often influenced by the desire for notoriety (“Food Refusal” 396). More significantly, the fact that refusing food would be denying the body of an “inherent or primitive desire” certainly suggests that Donkin would consider anorexia as evidence of hysteria.
As aforementioned, anorexia nervosa was not officially termed until later in the century, though the disorder had certainly been exhibited well before that. In fact, Jane Eyre, the eponymous heroine of Charlotte Bronte’s 1847 novel, can be considered an anorectic in light of both Donkin’s and Gull’s theories: Jane was evidently subject to Victorian cultural restraints regarding female behavior and expectations, which can explain her negative relationship with food as a manifestation of hysteria.
Jane’s mental illness, however, may not have been entirely intentional, for Bronte’s own life certainly had a great deal of influence on her beloved character. Because the text of Jane Eyre indicates some evidence of Bronte’s biographical information, it is plausible that both the author and her character faced societal constraints that could have led to anorexia. Firstly, Jane’s physical appearance and attitude towards it closely resembles Bronte’s. For example, at the age of fifteen, Bronte was extremely small and described herself as “stunted” (Gaskall 76). Likewise, Jane and Rochester’s descriptions of herself are frequently preceded by the words “small” or “little.” Moreover, as described in a biography of the Bronte sisters by Charlotte Maurat, just prior to writing Jane Eyre, Bronte told her sisters, “I will show you a heroine as plain and as small as myself” (Maurat 170). This declaration clearly shows that Bronte’s view of herself was echoed in her creation of Jane, which is significant for a number of reasons: while it justifies connecting Bronte’s own life story with Jane’s, it also further indicates that the Victorian woman was persuaded to deny herself of indulgence or frivolities, or to be “plain” and “small.”
Notably, Bronte and her sisters were primarily raised by their father following the death of their mother at a young age. In her biography of Bronte, Elizabeth Gaskall describes Mr. Bronte’s parenting style as stoic and strict, for he “wished to make his children hardy, and indifferent to the pleasures of eating and dress” (Gaskall 44). In addition, communal meals that took place in typical Victorian bourgeois homes, much like the Brontes’, often reflected the rigid societal norms: the meal “exuded discipline and control, decency and moderation. As never before self-control was the bourgeois adage: everything in moderation, including eating and weight” (Van Deth 210). This doctrine was evidently constantly being instilled in the mind of a Victorian such as Bronte.
Furthermore, an aversion to bodily pleasures and to excess was surely reiterated during Bronte’s boarding school days at Cowan Bridge School and later Roe Head. Bronte’s experiences inevitably influenced her character Jane’s indifference to worldly pleasures, as was indoctrinated in her at Lowood. In fact, as headmaster, Mr. Brocklehurst clearly states his plan for the Lowood girls is “not to accustom them to habits of luxury and indulgence, but to render them hardy, patient, self-denying” (Bronte 59). It seems plausible to claim that such an approach to bringing the fictional girls up was inspired by Bronte’s own childhood discipline under both her father and at boarding school.
Finally, Bronte’s attitude toward food certainly shows itself in Jane’s character. One of Bronte’s school friends from Roe Head recalled that Bronte “always showed physical feebleness in everything. She ate no animal food at school” (Gaskall 82). Similarly, Jane ate very little during her first quarter at Lowood: she and the other pupils “had scarcely sufficient to keep alive a delicate invalid” (Bronte 56). Also, despite not eating on her long journey to Lowood, Jane “did not touch the food” on her first night at Lowood (Bronte 40). Although the scarcity of food during this time period naturally had some influence on this aspect of the story, Bronte’s own perspective surely did as well.
In fact, Bronte allegedly ultimately passed away from tuberculosis. However, “This disease may be attended with decreased food intake and emaciation and has a historical relationship with self-starvation” (Van Deth 396). If Bronte had been an anorectic, it would be understandable that a character so similar to herself would also suffer from anorexia. While this evidence is difficult to prove, it bears mentioning as a parallel between the author and her heroine. Because a lot of Bronte is found throughout Jane Eyre, it is conceivable that many of the restraints that Jane is faced with are true of the Victorian era. These restraints plausibly would have influenced Jane to illustrate the symptoms of hysteria as described by Donkin.
While Bronte’s biographical influence on her novel is suggestive of Jane’s potential hysteria, or anorexia, other indications in the text also provide evidence for the heroine’s affliction. It is important to note that Jane’s acts of self-denial are brought about by outside influences that are representative of the Victorian era, such as the belief that a smaller body is more spiritual; as Donkin stated, “all kinds of… barriers to the free play of [the Victorian woman’s] powers are set up by ordinary social and ethical customs” (Donkin 197). While she, like other Victorian women, exhibits self-control, this virtue was not an act of self-improvement for her own sake, but rather because she was expected to do so by society.
Outside influence that led to Jane’s denial to self, or stifling of desires, is evident early on in the novel while Jane is still living with the Reeds at Gateshead. Upon acting out passionately against John, she is immediately punished by way of confinement in the “red-room” because she showed a lack of self-control over her emotions. Jane considers this punishment to be “unjust,” which “instigated some strange expedient to achieve escape from insupportable oppression—as running away, or, if that not be effected, never eating or drinking more, and letting myself die” (Bronte 10). This scene adequately introduces the Victorian expectation that a woman show willpower over her appetites, for Mrs. Reed promptly punishes Jane’s outburst, or lack of self-restraint.
Ironically, young Jane believes the best way to escape such a suppression of emotion would be through an act of abstinence that, according to the standards of the era, would actually be considered a “symbol of self-control over her potentially dangerous nature,” thus giving way to that oppression (Dominguez-Rue 299). At any rate, she feels compelled to take action against her punishment, which was not an uncommon sentiment. While the hunger strike did not originate until around 1910, perhaps “anorexia itself [had] been an expression of silent protest within the walls of the Victorian bourgeois home” (Van Deth 200). In Jane’s case, she considers self-starvation as a protest against her punishment and the Reeds.
This scene in the red-room, though, bears even more significance than introducing Victorian expectations for women and subsequent reactions. It also shows that the heroine uses food, or more specifically, the refusal of it, as a way to portray her emotions. While she had been expressing her outrage at her confinement, she thought to use the rejection of food as a way of expressing herself, or, in other words, as a way to gain attention. Evidently, Jane’s behavior in the red-room would suggest to a Victorian psychologist like Donkin that she was hysterical, as showed by abstaining from eating or drinking.
The cultural restraints that Donkin believed to be the basis of hysteria and that are reflected by Mrs. Reed’s punishment are again present at Lowood through Mr. Brocklehurst. One morning, the pupils’ breakfast is inedible because it is so overdone. As a result, Miss Temple orders a lunch of bread and cheese for the hungry girls (Bronte 44). However, this seemingly innocent act is greatly reprimanded by Mr. Brocklehurst several weeks later, for it violates his mission for the young women. In front of all the students at Lowood, he tells Miss Temple, “when you put bread and cheese, instead of burnt porridge, into these children’s mouths, you may indeed feed their vile bodies, but you little think how you starve their immortal souls!” (Bronte 60). The man’s statement clearly embodies the ever-present theory that the “slender body corporealizes… self-mastery and/or spirituality” (Silver 27). Essentially, the thinner a Lowood student is, the more religious she seems. At a young age, Jane is convinced to stifle her inherent wants and needs, which materializes as a refusal of food in spite of hunger.
Despite eventually gaining freedom from the confines of Lowood, Jane continues to be confronted with constraints during her employment at Thornfield. Though the suppression that Jane finds as a governess are in large part due to Mr. Rochester, it is important to note Jane’s age when she accepts the position of governess. At “barely eighteen,” Jane is certainly either undergoing puberty or has nearly finished with the development of her sex organs (Bronte 85). As Donkin notes, “The subjects of hysteria are, in a very large proportion, of the female sex, the symptoms most often appearing at or soon after puberty” (Donkin 197). It would come as no surprise then to Donkin or to the majority of Victorians that Jane would display signs of hysterical behavior simply because of her age.
While Jane’s age is of significance, Rochester and her feelings for him are far more noteworthy in regards to Jane’s potential hysteria or anorexia. Jane’s passionate, and somewhat forbidden, love for Rochester results in the stifling of her newfound sexual and romantic desires. At the same time, Rochester’s attitude toward Jane reinstates the Victorian restraints and the emphasis of self-control over the body, not unlike Mr. Brocklehurst at Lowood.
Shortly after meeting Rochester, Jane develops feelings for him. Despite his faults, Jane is so taken with the gentleman that “his presence in a room was more cheering than the brightest fire” (Bronte 147). However, the factors of Jane’s age, her social position, and societal norms all prevent her from being able to fully express her passionate feelings. Though at first she may ignore these factors, she is fully faced with them upon hearing about Blanche Ingram; after Mrs. Fairfax informs her of Miss Ingram, Jane internally berates herself as a fool and fantastic idiot. Because it “does no good” for her to be infatuated with “her superior, who cannot possibly intend to marry her,” Jane adopts the Victorian doctrine of self-denial and self-discipline (Bronte 161). Instead of allowing herself to divulge in such frivolous fantasies, she gives herself a sentence: to create a faithful self-portrait captioned “disconnected, poor, and plain.” Upon completing her self-governed task, Jane reflects, “I had reason to congratulate myself on the course of wholesome discipline to which I had thus forced my feelings to submit” (Bronte 162). Here, Jane replaces Mrs. Reed and Mr. Brocklehurst’s roles as dealer of punishment for bodily—that is, not spiritual—emotions or desires. Her quintessentially Victorian upbringing rears its head as she forces control over her body to both punish herself and to demonstrate self-mastery. Although this instance does not involve food, Jane’s behavior is synonymous with that of the Victorian hysterical anorectic because the latter would demonstrate self-mastery by refusing food and remaining thin.
As time passes at Thornfield, Jane’s feelings for Rochester continue to grow, yet she continually attempts to quell her desire for her master. She remarks, “I had not intended to love him: the reader knows I have wrought hard to extirpate from my soul the germs of love there detected” (Bronte 176). In addition to stifling her romantic desires, Jane tries to deny herself of other emotions as well: upon her joyful return to Thornfield, she “strangled a new-born agony” at the thought that Mr. Rochester would shortly cease to be her master (Bronte 248). Evidently, Jane is constantly at war with her emotions, rarely allowing herself to simply feel what she is feeling without checking herself.
At the same time as Jane is regularly suppressing her emotions, Rochester is further influencing her behavior by subtly enforcing societal restraints and the Victorian celebration of the small body. According to Thomas Laycock, a Victorian psychologist, a young girl at the age of eighteen is likely to develop a form of hysteria and so, “It is to such that marriage […] is so useful” (Laycock 189). Rochester’s choice to marry Jane can therefore be viewed as a way to control or suppress Jane’s passionate—and thus hysterical—emotions. In fact, shortly after asking Jane to marry him, Rochester tells his soon-to-be bride, “I will myself put the diamond chain round your neck, and the circlet on your forehead” (Bronte 264). Both of these accessories serve a very symbolic purpose, for each implies a constraint on Jane put on by Rochester and the act of marriage. Marrying Jane is both an acknowledgement of her hysterical actions, because it could be seen partially as an attempt to quell her “sthenic form of hysteria,” and at the same time a reinstatement of a cultural restraint on the Victorian woman.
Rochester’s actions toward Jane certainly imply a restraint that could cause Jane to act hysterically, but importantly, they also celebrate Jane’s small, thin body. Nearly every time Rochester addresses Jane, he uses the adjectives “small” or “little” with a positive tone. Before asking her to marry him, he regularly refers to the governess as “my little friend” (Bronte 206). Jane would then subconsciously associate being small with something positive: Rochester’s affection. As Rochester evidently agrees with the Victorian notion that a true woman was “petite and fragile,” he subtly persuades Jane to think the same (Dominguez-Rue 298). Jane would therefore be motivated to exercise self-control and potentially refuse food in order to remain thin and be a woman worthy of Rochester’s attention.
Furthermore, Rochester’s choice in marrying Jane rather than Blanche Ingram implies a celebration of Jane’s small figure. Unlike her sister Mary who is “too slim for her height,” Blanche is “moulded like a Dian” (Bronte 173). With her “noble bust,” it is evident that Miss Ingram’s body would be a great deal larger than Jane’s small one, yet Rochester ultimately chooses to make Jane his wife instead of Miss Ingram. This choice demonstrates Rochester’s preference for a small, slim woman, which is a representation of some Victorian men’s preferences.
His preference is further demonstrated when his secret wife, Bertha, is introduced to the story. Each mention of Bertha indicates that she is large: when Jane is telling Rochester that her room was invaded, she mentions the culprit is “a woman, tall and large” (Bronte 290). Then, when Rochester is forced to introduce Jane to Bertha, Jane observes, “She was a big woman, in stature almost equaling her husband, and corpulent besides” (Bronte 300). After a violent scene, Rochester addresses the group and explains his wish to have Jane instead of Bertha. While laying his hand on Jane’s shoulder, he commands the group to “Compare… this form with that bulk, then judge me” (Bronte 301). Not only does Rochester implicitly prefer a smaller woman, but he even explicitly says so. When he implores the others to find fault in his preference, he implies that anyone would choose the small girl in favor of the larger. This choice was of course not uncommon for the Victorian, for one popular piece of Victorian conduct literature entitled Beauty of Form and Grave of Vesture stated, “Corpulence destroys the beauty of form and grace of motion… beauty of form is destroyed when fat accumulates” (Silver 34). Considering that Bertha was corpulent, it is no wonder that she was viewed as horrific and unlovable. Not only does the larger body suggest a distinct lack of beauty, but it also suggests a lack of control over the appetite. Bertha is likened to a “beast,” “wild animal,” and a “demon” (Bronte 300). Whereas a human being has the rational ability to control oneself, an animal or creature most certainly does not. By describing her as such, Rochester insinuates that she is resistant to Victorian constraints and is therefore undesirable. While such an insinuation yet again represents the high opinion of self-control over the body during the nineteenth century, it would also have an impression on Jane and her view of her own body because of her feelings for the older man. If she is made to understand that her smaller body is more desirable than Bertha’s large one, she would be motivated to continue to practice self-restraint when it comes to eating.
Assuming Donkin’s theory on hysteria is factual and that stifled desires motivate hysterical behavior, Jane Eyre could certainly be considered a hysteric, in light of the strict standards Victorian women were inclined to meet that were constantly presented in her life. Further, considering the theory that hysterical behavior could be manifested as food refusal, one could suppose that Jane Eyre was an anorectic, particularly because of the Victorian obsession with self-control and the thin body. However, it is difficult to draw more specific evidence from the text in order to suggest that Jane was actively abstaining from eating on a regular basis, as would be an indication of anorexia in modern-day standards. In his article “Food Refusal and Insanity,” Ron van Deth outlines specific criteria that must be met in order to retroactively diagnose someone with anorexia nervosa. Among these criteria, van Deth notes that the subject must have endured “dramatic weight loss” with “No other physical illness or psychiatric disorders that would account for the weight loss” (Van Deth 396). He also notes that the subject would display “striking hyperactivity,” which is unlike other illnesses with “a comparable degree of emaciation or malnutrition.” Finally, the subject would have to deny her affliction, typically showed as a refusal to get help.
It is complicated to apply these criteria to Jane; though she is evidently small in stature, this does not necessarily mean she has endured “dramatic weight loss.” When Jane meets Hannah and Diana for the first time, they exclaim about how thin she appears. Hannah asks her sister, “Is she ill, or only famished?” and Diana responds, “Famished, I think” (Bronte 345). Certainly part of the reason that Jane is so thin is because she has gone a few days without food upon her departure from Thornfield, but her long recovery suggests that she had gone more than a mere three or four days on little food. Furthermore, Hannah and Diana attribute her weight to lack of food, not some other “physical illness or psychiatric disorder.”
The latter two criteria, however, are even more difficult to apply in Jane’s case. While she certainly does not seem to be exhausted due to malnutrition, it is hard to make the claim that she exhibits the opposite, or “striking hyperactivity.” There are no cases in which relatives or friends are urging Jane to eat more or to gain weight, other than at Lowood where all the girls were likely underweight. Therefore, it seems as though Jane does not fit all of the criteria for diagnosing anorexia as laid out by van Deth. Of course, a modern-day diagnosis and a Victorian diagnosis of anorexia would not be completely identical. Dr. Kathleen Renk notes that in both the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, anorexic women “restrict their food intake to conform to […] standards of slimness and to demonstrate their spiritual rather than carnal natures” (Renk 9). On the other hand, it is more likely that women suffering from anorexia in the later twentieth and twenty-first centuries would be more concerned with meeting standards of slimness rather than the demonstration of their spiritual natures, as the latter is a primarily Victorian notion.
Despite the fact that one could not confidently label Jane as an anorectic according to present day standards—particularly due to a lack of information, as she is a fictional character—it remains that Donkin or another Victorian psychologist might have considered Jane hysterical. As noted in the introduction, a hysterical diagnosis was not at all uncommon. Similar to Jane, many women were motivated to exhibit self-control over their desires and over their bodies. This notion is supported by the popularity of the corset, which was advertised as self-discipline and remains a prevalent icon of the Victorian era. Therefore, it is perhaps not so surprising that Donkin would link the regularly diagnosed hysteria with excessive self-restraint, for he was undoubtedly confronted with both of these facts on a regular basis.
Works Cited
Bronte, Charlotte. Jane Eyre. Paris: Flammarion, 1990. Print.
Dominguez-Rue, Emma. “Sins of the Flesh: Anorexia, Eroticism and the Female Vampire in Bram Stoker’s.” Journal of Gender Studies 19.3 (2010): 297-308. Web.
Donkin, Horatio Bryan. “Hysteria.” Embodied Selves. Oxford: Clarendon, 1998. Print.
Gaskell, Elizabeth Cleghorn. The Life of Charlotte Bronte. London: J.M. Dent, 1908. Print.
Maurat, Charlotte. The Brontes’ Secret. London: Constable, 1969. Print.
Laycock, Thomas. “The Nervous Diseases of Women.” Embodied Selves. Oxford: Clarendon, 1998. Print.
Renk, Kathleen Williams. “Jane Eyre as Hunger Artist.” Women’s Writing 15.1 (2008): 1-12. Web.
Silver, Anna Krugovoy. Victorian Literature and the Anorexic Body. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge UP, 2002. Print.
Vandereycken, Walter, and Ron Van Deth. From Fasting Saints to Anorexic Girls: The History of Self-Starvation. Washington Square, NY: New York UP, 1994. Print.
Van Deth, Ron and Walter Vandereycken. “Food Refusal and Insanity: Sitophobia and Anorexia Nervosa in Victorian Asylums.” International Journal of Eating Disorders 27.4 (2000): 390. Web.
As is consistent with other Victorian psychologists, Donkin notes that puberty and the development of sexual organs are correlated to the occurrence of female hysteria. In “Hysteria,” he suggests that after puberty, the female’s nervous system is unbalanced, which was commonly thought to be linked to hysterical symptoms. Donkin builds on this claim by noting that, although girls undergoing puberty naturally begin to develop sexual desires, they are unable to satisfy these inclinations due to societal constraints. Thus, he observes that many other Victorian psychologists “regard unsatisfied sexual desire as one of the leading causes of hysteria” (Donkin 197). Evidently, the popular belief was that prohibiting the body from gratifying its natural needs greatly affected the nervous system, which would consequently affect the mental state.
While Donkin clearly supported this widely held theory, he developed it further by suggesting that severe cases of hysteria occur in cases of “enforced abstinence from the gratification of any of the inherent and primitive desires” (Donkin 198). He later notes that, “There are clearly other stresses which render women especially liable to hysteria,” but he is primarily focused on the denial of satisfying one’s needs.
Although refusing gratification would afflict anybody, Donkin does posit that women are most frequently impacted, due both to their bodily constitutions, specifically the assumed weakness of the reproduction system, and to the Victorian expectations placed upon them. He points out that “’Thou shalt not’ meets a girl at almost every turn” (Donkin 197). According to A.K. Silver, author of Victorian Literature and the Anorexic Body, this observation is supported by the fact that the ideal Victorian woman was “one who submits her physical appetites… to her will” (Silver 27). Women who strove to meet the societal standards were undoubtedly focused not on what they did but rather on what they did not do. Donkin connects this cultural phenomenon by suggesting that abstaining from acting freely ultimately led women to exhibit certain behaviors that were at the time considered hysterical, such as refusing to eat or even an increase in sexual desire.
In his article, Donkin does not list specific behaviors but instead generalizes the typical attitudes that would be considered hysterical, thus leaving the definition of hysteria broad. He claims that, “the hysteric is pre-eminently an individualist, an unsocial unit, and fails in adaptation to organic surroundings (Donkin 198). Moreover, he notes that the hysterical female has either a deficiency or an excess of energy, which is “the result of the passion for sympathy or notoriety.” According to Donkin, many of the hysterical female’s abnormal actions, while being a result of repressed desires, are motivated by their want of attention. Though this cry for attention can be manifested through committing a crime, he notes that the hysterical woman may merely exaggerate her suffering in order to be noticed.
Although Donkin does not necessarily list distinct aspects of hysteria in his article, other Victorian psychologists believed that a wide number of symptoms fit under the scope of hysterical behavior. However, in his book From Fasting Saints to Anorexic Girls, Ron van Deth points out that the “unknown German physician Von Rein… described a case of hysteria in which food abstinence was one of the most prominent symptoms” (van Deth 130). Likewise, throughout the nineteenth century many people were “linking food abstinence to hysteria.” Although anorexia nervosa, or the act of starving oneself, was not medically established as a disease until 1873 by Sir William Gull, indications of anorexia were undoubtedly prevalent before and during the Victorian era. Because the actual term was not established until later in the century, physicians regarded self-starvation as “one of the manifold forms of hysteria” (van Deth 130).
Despite the lack of details in Donkin’s article, he would surely agree with the connection between abstinence from food and hysteria. Van Deth writes that “the motive of food refusal in these hysterical females can undoubtedly be attributed to their craving for attention from those around them,” which resonates with Donkin’s belief that hysterical actions were often influenced by the desire for notoriety (“Food Refusal” 396). More significantly, the fact that refusing food would be denying the body of an “inherent or primitive desire” certainly suggests that Donkin would consider anorexia as evidence of hysteria.
As aforementioned, anorexia nervosa was not officially termed until later in the century, though the disorder had certainly been exhibited well before that. In fact, Jane Eyre, the eponymous heroine of Charlotte Bronte’s 1847 novel, can be considered an anorectic in light of both Donkin’s and Gull’s theories: Jane was evidently subject to Victorian cultural restraints regarding female behavior and expectations, which can explain her negative relationship with food as a manifestation of hysteria.
Jane’s mental illness, however, may not have been entirely intentional, for Bronte’s own life certainly had a great deal of influence on her beloved character. Because the text of Jane Eyre indicates some evidence of Bronte’s biographical information, it is plausible that both the author and her character faced societal constraints that could have led to anorexia. Firstly, Jane’s physical appearance and attitude towards it closely resembles Bronte’s. For example, at the age of fifteen, Bronte was extremely small and described herself as “stunted” (Gaskall 76). Likewise, Jane and Rochester’s descriptions of herself are frequently preceded by the words “small” or “little.” Moreover, as described in a biography of the Bronte sisters by Charlotte Maurat, just prior to writing Jane Eyre, Bronte told her sisters, “I will show you a heroine as plain and as small as myself” (Maurat 170). This declaration clearly shows that Bronte’s view of herself was echoed in her creation of Jane, which is significant for a number of reasons: while it justifies connecting Bronte’s own life story with Jane’s, it also further indicates that the Victorian woman was persuaded to deny herself of indulgence or frivolities, or to be “plain” and “small.”
Notably, Bronte and her sisters were primarily raised by their father following the death of their mother at a young age. In her biography of Bronte, Elizabeth Gaskall describes Mr. Bronte’s parenting style as stoic and strict, for he “wished to make his children hardy, and indifferent to the pleasures of eating and dress” (Gaskall 44). In addition, communal meals that took place in typical Victorian bourgeois homes, much like the Brontes’, often reflected the rigid societal norms: the meal “exuded discipline and control, decency and moderation. As never before self-control was the bourgeois adage: everything in moderation, including eating and weight” (Van Deth 210). This doctrine was evidently constantly being instilled in the mind of a Victorian such as Bronte.
Furthermore, an aversion to bodily pleasures and to excess was surely reiterated during Bronte’s boarding school days at Cowan Bridge School and later Roe Head. Bronte’s experiences inevitably influenced her character Jane’s indifference to worldly pleasures, as was indoctrinated in her at Lowood. In fact, as headmaster, Mr. Brocklehurst clearly states his plan for the Lowood girls is “not to accustom them to habits of luxury and indulgence, but to render them hardy, patient, self-denying” (Bronte 59). It seems plausible to claim that such an approach to bringing the fictional girls up was inspired by Bronte’s own childhood discipline under both her father and at boarding school.
Finally, Bronte’s attitude toward food certainly shows itself in Jane’s character. One of Bronte’s school friends from Roe Head recalled that Bronte “always showed physical feebleness in everything. She ate no animal food at school” (Gaskall 82). Similarly, Jane ate very little during her first quarter at Lowood: she and the other pupils “had scarcely sufficient to keep alive a delicate invalid” (Bronte 56). Also, despite not eating on her long journey to Lowood, Jane “did not touch the food” on her first night at Lowood (Bronte 40). Although the scarcity of food during this time period naturally had some influence on this aspect of the story, Bronte’s own perspective surely did as well.
In fact, Bronte allegedly ultimately passed away from tuberculosis. However, “This disease may be attended with decreased food intake and emaciation and has a historical relationship with self-starvation” (Van Deth 396). If Bronte had been an anorectic, it would be understandable that a character so similar to herself would also suffer from anorexia. While this evidence is difficult to prove, it bears mentioning as a parallel between the author and her heroine. Because a lot of Bronte is found throughout Jane Eyre, it is conceivable that many of the restraints that Jane is faced with are true of the Victorian era. These restraints plausibly would have influenced Jane to illustrate the symptoms of hysteria as described by Donkin.
While Bronte’s biographical influence on her novel is suggestive of Jane’s potential hysteria, or anorexia, other indications in the text also provide evidence for the heroine’s affliction. It is important to note that Jane’s acts of self-denial are brought about by outside influences that are representative of the Victorian era, such as the belief that a smaller body is more spiritual; as Donkin stated, “all kinds of… barriers to the free play of [the Victorian woman’s] powers are set up by ordinary social and ethical customs” (Donkin 197). While she, like other Victorian women, exhibits self-control, this virtue was not an act of self-improvement for her own sake, but rather because she was expected to do so by society.
Outside influence that led to Jane’s denial to self, or stifling of desires, is evident early on in the novel while Jane is still living with the Reeds at Gateshead. Upon acting out passionately against John, she is immediately punished by way of confinement in the “red-room” because she showed a lack of self-control over her emotions. Jane considers this punishment to be “unjust,” which “instigated some strange expedient to achieve escape from insupportable oppression—as running away, or, if that not be effected, never eating or drinking more, and letting myself die” (Bronte 10). This scene adequately introduces the Victorian expectation that a woman show willpower over her appetites, for Mrs. Reed promptly punishes Jane’s outburst, or lack of self-restraint.
Ironically, young Jane believes the best way to escape such a suppression of emotion would be through an act of abstinence that, according to the standards of the era, would actually be considered a “symbol of self-control over her potentially dangerous nature,” thus giving way to that oppression (Dominguez-Rue 299). At any rate, she feels compelled to take action against her punishment, which was not an uncommon sentiment. While the hunger strike did not originate until around 1910, perhaps “anorexia itself [had] been an expression of silent protest within the walls of the Victorian bourgeois home” (Van Deth 200). In Jane’s case, she considers self-starvation as a protest against her punishment and the Reeds.
This scene in the red-room, though, bears even more significance than introducing Victorian expectations for women and subsequent reactions. It also shows that the heroine uses food, or more specifically, the refusal of it, as a way to portray her emotions. While she had been expressing her outrage at her confinement, she thought to use the rejection of food as a way of expressing herself, or, in other words, as a way to gain attention. Evidently, Jane’s behavior in the red-room would suggest to a Victorian psychologist like Donkin that she was hysterical, as showed by abstaining from eating or drinking.
The cultural restraints that Donkin believed to be the basis of hysteria and that are reflected by Mrs. Reed’s punishment are again present at Lowood through Mr. Brocklehurst. One morning, the pupils’ breakfast is inedible because it is so overdone. As a result, Miss Temple orders a lunch of bread and cheese for the hungry girls (Bronte 44). However, this seemingly innocent act is greatly reprimanded by Mr. Brocklehurst several weeks later, for it violates his mission for the young women. In front of all the students at Lowood, he tells Miss Temple, “when you put bread and cheese, instead of burnt porridge, into these children’s mouths, you may indeed feed their vile bodies, but you little think how you starve their immortal souls!” (Bronte 60). The man’s statement clearly embodies the ever-present theory that the “slender body corporealizes… self-mastery and/or spirituality” (Silver 27). Essentially, the thinner a Lowood student is, the more religious she seems. At a young age, Jane is convinced to stifle her inherent wants and needs, which materializes as a refusal of food in spite of hunger.
Despite eventually gaining freedom from the confines of Lowood, Jane continues to be confronted with constraints during her employment at Thornfield. Though the suppression that Jane finds as a governess are in large part due to Mr. Rochester, it is important to note Jane’s age when she accepts the position of governess. At “barely eighteen,” Jane is certainly either undergoing puberty or has nearly finished with the development of her sex organs (Bronte 85). As Donkin notes, “The subjects of hysteria are, in a very large proportion, of the female sex, the symptoms most often appearing at or soon after puberty” (Donkin 197). It would come as no surprise then to Donkin or to the majority of Victorians that Jane would display signs of hysterical behavior simply because of her age.
While Jane’s age is of significance, Rochester and her feelings for him are far more noteworthy in regards to Jane’s potential hysteria or anorexia. Jane’s passionate, and somewhat forbidden, love for Rochester results in the stifling of her newfound sexual and romantic desires. At the same time, Rochester’s attitude toward Jane reinstates the Victorian restraints and the emphasis of self-control over the body, not unlike Mr. Brocklehurst at Lowood.
Shortly after meeting Rochester, Jane develops feelings for him. Despite his faults, Jane is so taken with the gentleman that “his presence in a room was more cheering than the brightest fire” (Bronte 147). However, the factors of Jane’s age, her social position, and societal norms all prevent her from being able to fully express her passionate feelings. Though at first she may ignore these factors, she is fully faced with them upon hearing about Blanche Ingram; after Mrs. Fairfax informs her of Miss Ingram, Jane internally berates herself as a fool and fantastic idiot. Because it “does no good” for her to be infatuated with “her superior, who cannot possibly intend to marry her,” Jane adopts the Victorian doctrine of self-denial and self-discipline (Bronte 161). Instead of allowing herself to divulge in such frivolous fantasies, she gives herself a sentence: to create a faithful self-portrait captioned “disconnected, poor, and plain.” Upon completing her self-governed task, Jane reflects, “I had reason to congratulate myself on the course of wholesome discipline to which I had thus forced my feelings to submit” (Bronte 162). Here, Jane replaces Mrs. Reed and Mr. Brocklehurst’s roles as dealer of punishment for bodily—that is, not spiritual—emotions or desires. Her quintessentially Victorian upbringing rears its head as she forces control over her body to both punish herself and to demonstrate self-mastery. Although this instance does not involve food, Jane’s behavior is synonymous with that of the Victorian hysterical anorectic because the latter would demonstrate self-mastery by refusing food and remaining thin.
As time passes at Thornfield, Jane’s feelings for Rochester continue to grow, yet she continually attempts to quell her desire for her master. She remarks, “I had not intended to love him: the reader knows I have wrought hard to extirpate from my soul the germs of love there detected” (Bronte 176). In addition to stifling her romantic desires, Jane tries to deny herself of other emotions as well: upon her joyful return to Thornfield, she “strangled a new-born agony” at the thought that Mr. Rochester would shortly cease to be her master (Bronte 248). Evidently, Jane is constantly at war with her emotions, rarely allowing herself to simply feel what she is feeling without checking herself.
At the same time as Jane is regularly suppressing her emotions, Rochester is further influencing her behavior by subtly enforcing societal restraints and the Victorian celebration of the small body. According to Thomas Laycock, a Victorian psychologist, a young girl at the age of eighteen is likely to develop a form of hysteria and so, “It is to such that marriage […] is so useful” (Laycock 189). Rochester’s choice to marry Jane can therefore be viewed as a way to control or suppress Jane’s passionate—and thus hysterical—emotions. In fact, shortly after asking Jane to marry him, Rochester tells his soon-to-be bride, “I will myself put the diamond chain round your neck, and the circlet on your forehead” (Bronte 264). Both of these accessories serve a very symbolic purpose, for each implies a constraint on Jane put on by Rochester and the act of marriage. Marrying Jane is both an acknowledgement of her hysterical actions, because it could be seen partially as an attempt to quell her “sthenic form of hysteria,” and at the same time a reinstatement of a cultural restraint on the Victorian woman.
Rochester’s actions toward Jane certainly imply a restraint that could cause Jane to act hysterically, but importantly, they also celebrate Jane’s small, thin body. Nearly every time Rochester addresses Jane, he uses the adjectives “small” or “little” with a positive tone. Before asking her to marry him, he regularly refers to the governess as “my little friend” (Bronte 206). Jane would then subconsciously associate being small with something positive: Rochester’s affection. As Rochester evidently agrees with the Victorian notion that a true woman was “petite and fragile,” he subtly persuades Jane to think the same (Dominguez-Rue 298). Jane would therefore be motivated to exercise self-control and potentially refuse food in order to remain thin and be a woman worthy of Rochester’s attention.
Furthermore, Rochester’s choice in marrying Jane rather than Blanche Ingram implies a celebration of Jane’s small figure. Unlike her sister Mary who is “too slim for her height,” Blanche is “moulded like a Dian” (Bronte 173). With her “noble bust,” it is evident that Miss Ingram’s body would be a great deal larger than Jane’s small one, yet Rochester ultimately chooses to make Jane his wife instead of Miss Ingram. This choice demonstrates Rochester’s preference for a small, slim woman, which is a representation of some Victorian men’s preferences.
His preference is further demonstrated when his secret wife, Bertha, is introduced to the story. Each mention of Bertha indicates that she is large: when Jane is telling Rochester that her room was invaded, she mentions the culprit is “a woman, tall and large” (Bronte 290). Then, when Rochester is forced to introduce Jane to Bertha, Jane observes, “She was a big woman, in stature almost equaling her husband, and corpulent besides” (Bronte 300). After a violent scene, Rochester addresses the group and explains his wish to have Jane instead of Bertha. While laying his hand on Jane’s shoulder, he commands the group to “Compare… this form with that bulk, then judge me” (Bronte 301). Not only does Rochester implicitly prefer a smaller woman, but he even explicitly says so. When he implores the others to find fault in his preference, he implies that anyone would choose the small girl in favor of the larger. This choice was of course not uncommon for the Victorian, for one popular piece of Victorian conduct literature entitled Beauty of Form and Grave of Vesture stated, “Corpulence destroys the beauty of form and grace of motion… beauty of form is destroyed when fat accumulates” (Silver 34). Considering that Bertha was corpulent, it is no wonder that she was viewed as horrific and unlovable. Not only does the larger body suggest a distinct lack of beauty, but it also suggests a lack of control over the appetite. Bertha is likened to a “beast,” “wild animal,” and a “demon” (Bronte 300). Whereas a human being has the rational ability to control oneself, an animal or creature most certainly does not. By describing her as such, Rochester insinuates that she is resistant to Victorian constraints and is therefore undesirable. While such an insinuation yet again represents the high opinion of self-control over the body during the nineteenth century, it would also have an impression on Jane and her view of her own body because of her feelings for the older man. If she is made to understand that her smaller body is more desirable than Bertha’s large one, she would be motivated to continue to practice self-restraint when it comes to eating.
Assuming Donkin’s theory on hysteria is factual and that stifled desires motivate hysterical behavior, Jane Eyre could certainly be considered a hysteric, in light of the strict standards Victorian women were inclined to meet that were constantly presented in her life. Further, considering the theory that hysterical behavior could be manifested as food refusal, one could suppose that Jane Eyre was an anorectic, particularly because of the Victorian obsession with self-control and the thin body. However, it is difficult to draw more specific evidence from the text in order to suggest that Jane was actively abstaining from eating on a regular basis, as would be an indication of anorexia in modern-day standards. In his article “Food Refusal and Insanity,” Ron van Deth outlines specific criteria that must be met in order to retroactively diagnose someone with anorexia nervosa. Among these criteria, van Deth notes that the subject must have endured “dramatic weight loss” with “No other physical illness or psychiatric disorders that would account for the weight loss” (Van Deth 396). He also notes that the subject would display “striking hyperactivity,” which is unlike other illnesses with “a comparable degree of emaciation or malnutrition.” Finally, the subject would have to deny her affliction, typically showed as a refusal to get help.
It is complicated to apply these criteria to Jane; though she is evidently small in stature, this does not necessarily mean she has endured “dramatic weight loss.” When Jane meets Hannah and Diana for the first time, they exclaim about how thin she appears. Hannah asks her sister, “Is she ill, or only famished?” and Diana responds, “Famished, I think” (Bronte 345). Certainly part of the reason that Jane is so thin is because she has gone a few days without food upon her departure from Thornfield, but her long recovery suggests that she had gone more than a mere three or four days on little food. Furthermore, Hannah and Diana attribute her weight to lack of food, not some other “physical illness or psychiatric disorder.”
The latter two criteria, however, are even more difficult to apply in Jane’s case. While she certainly does not seem to be exhausted due to malnutrition, it is hard to make the claim that she exhibits the opposite, or “striking hyperactivity.” There are no cases in which relatives or friends are urging Jane to eat more or to gain weight, other than at Lowood where all the girls were likely underweight. Therefore, it seems as though Jane does not fit all of the criteria for diagnosing anorexia as laid out by van Deth. Of course, a modern-day diagnosis and a Victorian diagnosis of anorexia would not be completely identical. Dr. Kathleen Renk notes that in both the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, anorexic women “restrict their food intake to conform to […] standards of slimness and to demonstrate their spiritual rather than carnal natures” (Renk 9). On the other hand, it is more likely that women suffering from anorexia in the later twentieth and twenty-first centuries would be more concerned with meeting standards of slimness rather than the demonstration of their spiritual natures, as the latter is a primarily Victorian notion.
Despite the fact that one could not confidently label Jane as an anorectic according to present day standards—particularly due to a lack of information, as she is a fictional character—it remains that Donkin or another Victorian psychologist might have considered Jane hysterical. As noted in the introduction, a hysterical diagnosis was not at all uncommon. Similar to Jane, many women were motivated to exhibit self-control over their desires and over their bodies. This notion is supported by the popularity of the corset, which was advertised as self-discipline and remains a prevalent icon of the Victorian era. Therefore, it is perhaps not so surprising that Donkin would link the regularly diagnosed hysteria with excessive self-restraint, for he was undoubtedly confronted with both of these facts on a regular basis.
Works Cited
Bronte, Charlotte. Jane Eyre. Paris: Flammarion, 1990. Print.
Dominguez-Rue, Emma. “Sins of the Flesh: Anorexia, Eroticism and the Female Vampire in Bram Stoker’s.” Journal of Gender Studies 19.3 (2010): 297-308. Web.
Donkin, Horatio Bryan. “Hysteria.” Embodied Selves. Oxford: Clarendon, 1998. Print.
Gaskell, Elizabeth Cleghorn. The Life of Charlotte Bronte. London: J.M. Dent, 1908. Print.
Maurat, Charlotte. The Brontes’ Secret. London: Constable, 1969. Print.
Laycock, Thomas. “The Nervous Diseases of Women.” Embodied Selves. Oxford: Clarendon, 1998. Print.
Renk, Kathleen Williams. “Jane Eyre as Hunger Artist.” Women’s Writing 15.1 (2008): 1-12. Web.
Silver, Anna Krugovoy. Victorian Literature and the Anorexic Body. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge UP, 2002. Print.
Vandereycken, Walter, and Ron Van Deth. From Fasting Saints to Anorexic Girls: The History of Self-Starvation. Washington Square, NY: New York UP, 1994. Print.
Van Deth, Ron and Walter Vandereycken. “Food Refusal and Insanity: Sitophobia and Anorexia Nervosa in Victorian Asylums.” International Journal of Eating Disorders 27.4 (2000): 390. Web.