Psychosomatic Illness and Grotesque Bodies in Late Nineteenth-Century Narrative Fiction

Lars Elleström (Växjö University, Sweden)

“The grotesque” is a concept that once emerged within the visual arts, originally denoting representations of fusions between human beings, animals, and plants. Less narrow modern definitions of the grotesque point to the “openness” of bodies. In this sense, the grotesque is something that comes into being when a (human) body is abnormally invaded by the exterior, or when the inside of a (human) body is abnormally exposed to the outside. Studies of the grotesque in nineteenth-century art and literature almost always focus on romanticism.

In the second half of the nineteenth century, however, significant parts of Western literature put heavy emphasis on describing the human body in a realistic/naturalistic way. Not the least the ill body became of major interest. In my paper, I argue that psychosomatics is a key concept for understanding and interpreting what goes on in some of the most renowned novels of the time. I advocate the view that there is a common process of social strain in these novels, intimately connected to gender restrictions, that leads to psychosomatic illness of the female characters. The outside in the form of social strain is internalized, and as a result of inner tensions the bodies are destroyed and opened up in a concrete, physical way. One might thus argue that sociosomatic or sociopsychosomatic illness would be more accurate terms.

A common feature of the bulk of these novels and short stories dealing with psychosomatics is the highly visual, almost clinical descriptions of the ill and dead bodies. These verbal representations of visual scenes may be understood as grotesque. The grotesque thus emerges as a realistic and social rather than romantic and aesthetic category.

Important texts to be discussed are: Alexandre Dumas, fils., La Dame aux camélias (1848); Gustave Flaubert, Madame Bovary (1857); Edmond de Goncourt, La Fille Élisa (1877); José Maria Eça de Queirós, O Primo Basilio (1878); Amalie Skram, Constance Ring (1885); Charlotte Perkins Gilman, ”The Yellow Wallpaper” (1899). The paper is an offspring of a larger work in progress: Body Crises: Social Strain and Grotesque Bodies in Late Nineteenth-Century Narrative Fiction.