Mesmerism, female identity, and narratives of control in fiction 1840-1900

Abstract

This thesis critically analyses the representation of mesmerism in nineteenth-century fictional literature in respect to its influence on women’s minds and bodies. The thesis encompasses a sixty-year timespan to examine how the relationship between mesmerism and women reflects the patriarchal dynamics and distribution of power and authority in contemporary British, European, and American society. The project seeks to stand alongside existing research on literary mesmerism and gender dynamics, from such scholars as Ann Heilmann, Fiona Coll, and Susan Poznar, by incorporating the analysis into a broader discussion of themes such as control and consent, domesticity and marriage, women’s health, the interplay between physical and psychic identity, and nineteenth-century understandings of ideas that would inform later psychoanalytical concepts such as the id/ego/superego, and sociological concepts such as the Medusa complex. The thesis will conclude by discussing how nineteenth-century attitudes towards mesmerism and its effect on women continues to inform modern-day perceptions of the trance state.