'insanity' in nineteenth century novels

[Admin]

the rather obvious choice

http://www.online-literature.com/dostoevsky/crimeandpunishment/

Crime and Punishment

http://www.online-literature.com/shellym/frankenstein/

Frankenstein

[sal]

Can anyone recommend novels written in the nineteenth century which feature characters (not necessarily the main character) who have a psychiatric illness/ condition
Thank you

[vladline]

I think that "Fall of the House of Usher" by Edgar Allan Poe is a frightful tale of madness that deals with amongst other themes: narcolepsy, pre-mature entombment, and inherited evil! I found it to be quite disturbing when I first read it.

Another choice that comes to mind is "Alice in Wonderland, Through the Looking Glass" by Lewis Caroll. Although this book is valuable in so many ways because of it's duality (It's fun for children, but at the same time deeply philosophical for the mature mind.)

Lewis Caroll who suffered from epilepsy was a brilliant and imaginative author, who's books are full of insight for any age. Enjoy!

[wmchichiri]

Charlotte Bronte's, Jane Eyre

Charles Dickens, Great Expectactions

Lewis Caroll's Wonderland based books, I mean what else would you call the Mad-Hatter?

Alexander Dumas's Man int he Iron Mask can be argued...

there's a Spanish play by, De La Barca entitled "La Vida Es Suena"


Herman Melville's, Moby Dick can be argued as such.

Oscar Wilde's Picture of Dorian Grey for "unhealthy" *INSANE* views of homosexuality. You have to understand that froma historical viewpoint, Wilde was tried and pronounced INSANE for his homosexual tendencies. The 19th Century was when the definition of insane transferred between medical and legal definitions.

You can sorta look at the texts from that perspective.

ALSO the common "hysteria" break-outs in women, were also construed as a type of insanity in that time period, so you could argue any such scene/character with a hysteria outbreak from the 19th century to also be an example of insanity.

[MortalFool]

Fall of the House of Usher definately has crazy people in it!

[weirdoe]

The most obvious one is 'The Diary of a Madman' by Nikolaij Gogol, I guess.

[Edmond]

Crime and Punishment By Dostoevsky

A diary of a madman By Nikolai Gogol

Don Quixote (sort of) by Miguel Cervantes

There are more I am sure, for I only have read these.

[MarsMonster]

the black obelisk, remark, sorry if the translation is not correct.
not much of a book, but it poses one question: where is the line separating sane from insane?

[Zeno]

I'm not sure why Crime and Punishment is listed since it was as the title indicats a case of Crime; a calculated murder for finacial gain and philisophical reasons followed by capture and punishment by imprisonment. I don't believe he was ever insane.He was just very weak through stress and poverty. On the other hand i do believe the Charecter of Smerdakov in The Brothers Karamozov was insane since he belived he was in a leauge with Ivan to kill Fydor Karamazov which was all in his mind, although Ivan is still held moarly responsible for the insane mans actions.

An Excelent Example of Schizophrenia can be found In Dostoevsky's short novel The Double.

insanity:
1 a : a deranged state of the mind usually occurring as a specific disorder (as schizophrenia) and usually excluding such states as mental retardation, psychoneurosis, and various character disorders b : a mental disorder
2 : such unsoundness of mind or lack of understanding as prevents one from having the mental capacity required by law to enter into a particular relationship, status, or transaction or as removes one from criminal or civil responsibility

[MarsMonster]

people here love reading dictinaries.
the definition of a word doesn't say much. word is something man uses for communication. a term is not all that simple to define.

[Robert E Lee]

An Excelent Example of Schizophrenia can be found In Dostoevsky's short novel The Double.



meh. I didn't like that one. It got repetitive, and the characters were badly defined, not to mention overly eccentric; but I guess the latter is just a trademark of Dostoyevsky. Care to explain the ending? I didn't get it. You can PM me if you don't feel like giving away plot details/.

[Zeno]

people here love reading dictinaries.
the definition of a word doesn't say much. word is something man uses for communication. a term is not all that simple to define.

I don't think we can have any communication without defenitons. The common usage of insane is excesively broad. People use the word insane to describe anyone who does not believe what they believe. they are convinced they will go to heaven and be given 40 virgins ...insane. They think Chirst walked on water and raised people from the dead ...insane.
They belive in Capitilisim... Insane. Raskonlinkov believed he was justified in commiting murder... insane. To my mind insanity implies a break with reality and not a question of belief since all people varry in their beliefs.

2.

I said it was an Excelent example of Schitzophrenia it's merit as entertainment is a different matter. To me it was very good, Judged against Doestoevskys body of work it may be a minor somewhat inferior peice from his younger years. In the end he was commited to a mad house (remember we are shown everything through the mind of the sick man, rather then objective reality)

[Admin]

Raskonikov was insane. Not because of the murder, not all murderers are insane. If you don't want to call it insane, say he had a mental defect. Whatever, the point is he wasn't right in the head.

[Zeno]

I don't know. He seemed aware of what he was doing and why. He comited murder for money to "further his carer" or to benifit mankind or something. Afterwards he admited that He was no Nopoleon and not a man capable of "acting only for himself" etc. He felt extreme guilt after the murder and this caused him alot of suffering. To me he was not insane only he suffered alot and was isolated. I don't think he had any mental defect he was simply under great stress do to the conditions of his life.

[b]

I believe there are many examples of nineteenth-century novels with insanity, if you use the common feeling that an 'insane person' implies. Try Goethe, Poe or Dostoevsky!

But when you want to discuss those novels and the insanity of their characters on a higher level, you will have to define 'insanity' on a more abstract way.



insanity:
1 a : a deranged state of the mind usually occurring as a specific disorder (as schizophrenia) and usually excluding such states as mental retardation, psychoneurosis, and various character disorders b : a mental disorder
2 : such unsoundness of mind or lack of understanding as prevents one from having the mental capacity required by law to enter into a particular relationship, status, or transaction or as removes one from criminal or civil responsibility

When you use this definition of insanity, I think most of the examples that you gave don't have anything to do with insanity. Most of the 'romantic murderers' or just 'people with weird behaviour' that occur in those books are well conscious and usually have no 'insane' motives for their kills.

But I understand when you use the common feeling that an 'insane person' implies': that of weird, unresonalbe behaviour.

(Just try Goethe, Poe and Dostoevsky!)

[MarsMonster]

people here love reading dictinaries.
the definition of a word doesn't say much. word is something man uses for communication. a term is not all that simple to define.

I don't think we can have any communication without defenitons. The common usage of insane is excesively broad. People use the word insane to describe anyone who does not believe what they believe. they are convinced they will go to heaven and be given 40 virgins ...insane. They think Chirst walked on water and raised people from the dead ...insane.
They belive in Capitilisim... Insane. Raskonlinkov believed he was justified in commiting murder... insane. To my mind insanity implies a break with reality and not a question of belief since all people varry in their beliefs.


true and true.

i am more likely to believe that the term is not defined properly than to say someone is insane because he fits the definition.
and i believe that we don't even know what is insanity or what separates the insane from the sane.

[Zeno]

Bartholomeus Bloom said-

But I understand when you use the common feeling that an 'insane person' implies': that of weird, unresonalbe behaviour.

To me Raskonlinkovs behavior is not weird or unresonable. It is very understandble under the circumstances of his life. I understand what you mean it is like the above examples i gave; what seems strange or weird to one person is normal to another. However the medical meaning of insanity is somewhat different for example if a man believes he is cutting open a turkey when in fact he is cutting up his wife then he is insane.


The dispute then, he said, is not about any common matter, but about being mad or not. -Marcus Arurelius [/quote]

[b]

I do no what you mean about Rasknonlinkov.

But the thing I tried to point to in my previous post, was the problem of difinition, not that of Rasknonlinkovs behaviour.

[waxmephilosophical]

1984 has some good references to sanity/insanity, and very interesting parts on sanity as it relates to objective reality. (O'Brien says to Winston in the Ministry of Love," Insanity is a minority of one.") There are lots of other good references, just can't remember them right now.

[b]

I do know what you mean about Rasknonlinkov.

But the thing I tried to point to in my previous post, was the problem of difinition, not that of Rasknonlinkovs behaviour.

[ChrisKorban]

At the moment, i'm working on an english essay where i have to analyze 4 mentally disturbed characters from the books we've read this year.
Anyways, in my opinion, Here are some books i consider some of the characters to be insane.

Catcher in the Rye - J.D. Salinger - Holden
Wide Sargasso Sea - Jean Rhys (The story of the crazy first of of Rochester in Jane Eyre.) - Anotionetter and her mother Annette.
The Song of Solomon - Toni Morrison - Rhena ( Solomon's Wife ), and Hagar.

Well, thats my two cents, i'm not sure about threm all being written in the nineteenth century.

[Tamara Kaye Sellman]

Lots of good suggestions here, I would also recommend the short story, "The Yellow Wallpaper" by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, not because the protagonist was insane, but because she was viewed as insane (definitely a pre-Suffrage attitude, that women who had conflicts with "normal" social behavior were somehow mentally damaged).

[chrissy]

Toni Morrison and JD Salinger are definatly 20th c. I don't know about the other author you have there. I think most of the good examples have been covered here.

[Tamara Kaye Sellman]

Jean Rhys is definitely 20th century and an amazing British writer from the West Indies.

[AbdoRinbo]

Thomas Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow: It will haunt your waking and sleeping mind. 746 pages of pure, crystallized madness. A captivating commentary on the underlying forces at work during the last three years of WWII. Over 420 characters, nearly 150 sex scenes! Men hurling pies at American bombers from hot-air balloons! A Brigadier General who eats **** (amazing but true)! Machines stealing the souls out of peoples' skulls! A lieutenant whose sexual conquests coincide perfectly with a map of German V-2 rocket impacts over London (Pavlovian Paradise)! Incest! An immortal light-bulb named Byron, who hatches a scheme to send the entire continent of Europe into a fit of strobe-induced epilepsy! And much more!

[chrissy]

Way to sell a book! lol

[nome1486]

Mark Twain's The Prince and the Pauper has a brief scene with a mad hermit--and, of course, everyone thinks that the prince and Tom are insane when they say who they really are.

[Melodylemming]

Wilkie Collins' The Woman in White. There's a lot of discussion of insanity, and it's a great mystery as well.

[alatar]

kurt vonnegut's novel slaughterhouse five is pretty insane whether you think the protagonist is insane or not, though it is certainly arguable...i think that a war would drive just about anyone insane......anyways, i think that there are a few scenes with mentally ill people at least

[AbdoRinbo]

kurt vonnegut's novel slaughterhouse five is pretty insane whether you think the protagonist is insane or not, though it is certainly arguable...i think that a war would drive just about anyone insane......anyways, i think that there are a few scenes with mentally ill people at least

I agree, Slaughterhouse Five is a perfect example of insanity, from the trenches of World War II to the planetary zoo of Tralfamadore. This book is in my top three favorite of all time.

[Scheherazade]

*bump*

19th C, madness? Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre!

I agree that Raskolnikov showed... signs of mental instability before and after the murder.

[mono]

Interesting discussion.
I highly agree with all of the afore mentioned works, but a few I would like to contribute:
The Turn of the Screw by Henry James, anything by Edgar Allan Poe (especially his short novel, The Narrative of A. Gordon Pym), Diary of a Drug Fiend by Aleister Crowley (just after the nineteenth century), and one could argue The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson.

[chispa]

do you think the main character in this book of Camus is insane or it is just mistake of the people that condemn him?