Mathilde Vialard,Sensation Novels and Domestic Minds. Mental Health in Victorian Literature
Mathilde Vialard, Sensation Novels and Domestic Minds. Mental Health in Victorian Literature, New York & Oxon: Routledge, 2024. 9781032058634. 238 pages.
Index terms
Mots-clés :
aliénation morale, domesticité, ère victorienne, hypocondrie, oisiveté, mélancolie, monomania, romans à sensationKeywords:
domesticity, hyponchondria, idleness, melancholia, monomania, moral insanity, sensation novels, Victorian eraFull text
1Five chapters compose this 211pp. essay along with an introduction, a conclusion, a bibliography and an index, according to the following chapter division:
21. ‘And we will pass hours and hours every day with these four friendly walls round us’: Domesticated Idleness in Sensation Novels
32. ‘I am nothing but a bundle of nerves dressed up to look like a man’: Nervous Disorders and Domestic Life
43. ‘Our quiet life here maddens me ; I can bear it no longer ; I must go’: Public Industriousness and Obsession
54. ‘Mad to-day and sane tomorrow, mad yesterday and sane to-day’: Partial Insanity or Deviant Behaviours
65. ‘If this state of depression continues, very distressing mental consequences may follow’: Melancholy Extremes in Sensation Novels
7Mathilde Vialard’s precise, complex yet clear analysis provides a fresh and enlightening insight into sensation novels. Her essay claims the legacy of medical humanities and the interconnection between medical studies and humanities already existing in the 19th century, medical pathologies frequently being described in 19th century literature. Going beyond the universal scientific medical approach, the aim of this essay is to deal with mental diseases through the prism of literature so as to put the human back to the centre of the picture, to better understand the human dimension of illness: Vialard stresses how literary fiction becomes a medium of the unique experience of real illness and mental states, and a vector of its apprehension by a broader audience. Emphasis is put on the fruitful dialogue between contemporary medical discourse and fictional discourses, especially on the correlations between fictional representation and medical discourse on mental diseases. This interdisciplinary approach is central to the health humanities at the heart of her teaching and research.
8The numerous contemporary medical references evidence that mental disorders were largely explored by contemporary 19th century practitioners, with a focus on mental health, psychology and madness. Vialard further demonstrates how sensation novels especially take up the contemporary scientific discourses of the time and allow in return a better understanding of mental disorders in a dialectic movement. Her choice of sensation fiction is particularly apposite as a popular genre generating strong emotions and sensations, therefore providing the perfect soil for psychological disquiet. Home, a pillar of both the Victorian imagination and of the sensation novel, is the privileged environment that accounts for an individual experience largely shared by the Victorians. The analysis then alternates between the private and the public spheres to question the complex relationships between home and mental states during the Victorian era. Vialard highlights the subversion, in sensation novels, of the commonly accepted ideology of home as the ultimate sacred refuge, a safe haven and a protection against the intrusion of modernity. Home, the ideal of domestic bliss for middle to upper classes, proves to be an artificial construction based on lies and deception, a place of repression and psychological suffering. Home in sensation novels is a place of confinement, boredom, more often than not leading to depression and obsessive tendencies. Conversely, she underlines how the deprivation of home may bring forth a more active behaviour aiming at securing one, yet potentially leading to monomaniac propensities. Both the excess and the lack of domesticity thus prey on the individual’s mental health. This approach moreover calls into question a traditional gendered conception of home and the contrasted domestic experiences of men and women: while idleness is socially valued for women, society condemns it for men, expected as they are to contribute to the development of the nation. Conversely, activity is viewed as transgression for women and securing a property is reserved for men. Vialard’s point is that, whether male or female, the character’s relationship to home is always problematic, that one’s relationship to home breeds identity crises, provoking psychological disorder, melancholia, profound unhappiness and a difficulty to shape one’s identity in or outside home. By subverting expected domestic roles (active women, passive men) and questioning a gendered approach of pathologies like hypochondria or hysteria by focusing on the male characters’ hitherto largely overlooked relation to home, this essay demonstrates how domesticity becomes a major gender issue.
9The study also offers an extensive approach of madness through a thorough examination of specific mental disorders like monomania, depression, melancholy, nervousness (not just the typical female hysteria) and hypochondria. The concept of partial insanity is similarly discussed at length (monomania and moral insanity being linked to a lack of domestic anchoring breeding obsessive behaviours), which logically raises the issue of the individual’s responsibility. In the context of sensation novels expected to convey strong moral values, and if partial insanity allows absolution for their heroes and heroines, then what of the legitimacy of any kind of punishment for their crimes? Eventually, Vialard concludes, sensation novels provide a warning against all kinds of excesses, which foster mental disorders and above all profound despair linked to the pressure of gendered domesticity.
List of illustrations
![]() |
|
|---|---|
| URL | http://journals.openedition.org/miranda/docannexe/image/68839/img-1.png |
| File | image/png, 195k |
References
Electronic reference
Stéphanie Richet-Drouet, “Mathilde Vialard,Sensation Novels and Domestic Minds. Mental Health in Victorian Literature”, Miranda [Online], 32 | 2025, Online since 14 October 2025, connection on 17 January 2026. URL: http://journals.openedition.org/miranda/68839; DOI: https://doi.org/10.4000/14yor
Top of pageCopyright
The text only may be used under licence CC BY-NC 4.0. All other elements (illustrations, imported files) may be subject to specific use terms.
Top of page



