Spasmodic affections: poetry, pathology and the spasmodic hero

Kirstie Blair

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article

13 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

Although she stresses her genuine suffering from a combination of mental and physical factors, Wollstonecraft makes it clear that spasms are slightly comic symptoms, presumably in their bathetic relation to tragic heartbreak. Her deliberate emphasis on the emotional and affective cause of her illness suggests she is exploiting the perceived link between female emotion and bodily suffering: in retrospect, the reader might also smile at the idea that Wollstonecraft, later notable for brilliantly scornful dissections of the cultural relation between women and sickness, might have fallen prey to such a peculiarly feminine illness herself. Wollstonecraft was writing over sixty years before "spasm" and "spasmodic" became terms used to denote a particular literary movement, yet this letter is significant because it highlights accepted ideas about the relation between nervousness, heartbreak, and spasmodic attacks and because it additionally considers the association between spasms and gender. These ideas, as we shall see, went on to become a subject of considerable debate in the first half of the nineteenth century, and eventually came to haunt spasmodic poetry and its practitioners.
LanguageEnglish
Pages473-490
Number of pages18
JournalVictorian Poetry
Volume42
Issue number4
Publication statusPublished - 22 Dec 2004

Fingerprint

Wollstonecraft
Poetry
Hero
Pathology
Affection
Heartbreak
Illness
Emotion
Causes
Cultural Relations
Physical
Sickness
Letters
Affective
Literary Movement
Dissection
Reader
Attack
Sixties

Keywords

  • Scottish
  • poetry
  • medical history
  • Victorian

Cite this

Blair, Kirstie. / Spasmodic affections : poetry, pathology and the spasmodic hero. In: Victorian Poetry. 2004 ; Vol. 42, No. 4. pp. 473-490.
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Blair, K 2004, 'Spasmodic affections: poetry, pathology and the spasmodic hero' Victorian Poetry, vol. 42, no. 4, pp. 473-490.

Spasmodic affections : poetry, pathology and the spasmodic hero. / Blair, Kirstie.

In: Victorian Poetry, Vol. 42, No. 4, 22.12.2004, p. 473-490.

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article

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AB - Although she stresses her genuine suffering from a combination of mental and physical factors, Wollstonecraft makes it clear that spasms are slightly comic symptoms, presumably in their bathetic relation to tragic heartbreak. Her deliberate emphasis on the emotional and affective cause of her illness suggests she is exploiting the perceived link between female emotion and bodily suffering: in retrospect, the reader might also smile at the idea that Wollstonecraft, later notable for brilliantly scornful dissections of the cultural relation between women and sickness, might have fallen prey to such a peculiarly feminine illness herself. Wollstonecraft was writing over sixty years before "spasm" and "spasmodic" became terms used to denote a particular literary movement, yet this letter is significant because it highlights accepted ideas about the relation between nervousness, heartbreak, and spasmodic attacks and because it additionally considers the association between spasms and gender. These ideas, as we shall see, went on to become a subject of considerable debate in the first half of the nineteenth century, and eventually came to haunt spasmodic poetry and its practitioners.

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Blair K. Spasmodic affections: poetry, pathology and the spasmodic hero. Victorian Poetry. 2004 Dec 22;42(4):473-490.