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Women’s Chronic “Oppressive Pain” in Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights, Charlotte Brontë’s Shirley, and Elizabeth Gaskell’s Mary Barton

Smith, Kiley
Abstract
With a modern understanding of chronic pain and its psychological ties at the forefront, this project seeks to unpack the social ramifications for women suffering from long-term pain in Victorian fiction. Focusing on novels by Emily Brontë, Charlotte Brontë, and Elizabeth Gaskell, this project asks: where do we see women in prolonged pain in mid-Victorian fiction? What social and psychological factors affect their experiences of pain? I argue that in these novels, “chronic” or prolonged pain serves as the locus for a complex of issues pertaining to gender, psychology, and caregiving. The women characters’ suffering in these works reflects the pervasive, destructive power of broader social ills in Victorian England.
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2025-05-01
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Undergraduate Honors Theses
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Women_s_Chronic__Oppressive_Pain__in_Emily_Brontë_s_Wuthering_Hei.pdf
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Morse, Deborah Denenholz
Wheatley, Kim
Wilson, Brett
Levitan, Kathrin
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English
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https://scholarworks.wm.edu/handle/internal/11917
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