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Old Monsters, Old Curses: The New Hysterical Woman and Penny Dreadful

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Neo-Victorian Madness

Abstract

Penny Dreadful’s Vanessa Ives is not the quintessential hysterical woman of the Victorian era, even though her supernatural symptoms match the diagnostic criteria popularised by French neurologist Jean-Martin Charcot. Instead, she is a new hysterical woman who fights actual monsters, not symbolic ones that feed her psychosis. In a modern horror film, such sentiment would support a conservative impulse; in a neo-Victorian series, it illuminates the problematic origins of psychiatry. Unlike the male hysterics in her midst, Vanessa is a self-actualised woman who reclaims her madness from patriarchal diagnosis as victim, victor and villain, exposing the complexities of hysteric reclamation in feminist theory.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Saddleback College, Rancho Cucamonga, CA, USA

    Tim Posada

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  1. Tim Posada
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Editors and Affiliations

  1. University of New Brunswick, Saint John, NB, Canada

    Sarah E. Maier

  2. Liberty University, Lynchburg, VA, USA

    Brenda Ayres

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Posada, T. (2020). Old Monsters, Old Curses: The New Hysterical Woman and Penny Dreadful. In: Maier, S., Ayres, B. (eds) Neo-Victorian Madness. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-46582-7_10

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