The Most Dreadful Visitation

"Victorian literature is rife with scenes of madness, with mental disorder functioning as everything from a simple plot device to a commentary on the foundations of Victorian society. But while madness in Victorian fiction has been much studied, most scholarship has focused on the portrayal of madness in women; male mental disorder in the period has suffered comparative neglect. In The Most Dreadful Visitation, Valerie Pedlar redresses the balance. This study explores a wide range of Victorian writings to consider the relationship between the portrayal of similar disorders in the writings of doctors and psychologists. Pedlar presents in-depth studies of Dickens's Barnaby Rudge, Tennyson's Maud, Bram Stoker's Dracula and Trollope's He Knew He Was Right, considering each work in the context of Victorian understandings - and fears - of mental degeneracy."--Jacket.