He’s Come Undone: Gender, Territory, and Hysteria in Rob Roy

Abstract

In March 1817, at an Edinburgh dinner party, Walter Scott collapsed in a spasm of agonizing pain. It was the first hint of the illness that was to plague him in the months to come, during which period he suffered appalling stomach cramps; ingested alarming quantities of opium; fell into a melancholy depression; suffered chronic writer’s block; and fantasized writing his own obituary. Recovery was slow and debilitating, not least because Scott’s doctors had great difficulty in diagnosing his ailment (gallstones). T could neither stir for weakness and giddiness’, he reported to his friend John Morritt, ‘nor read for dazzling in my eyes nor listen for a whizzing sound in my ears nor even think for lack of the power of arranging my ideas’.¹ Being Scott, however, he did manage to write a novel: Rob Roy. If productivity under such trying circumstances seems startling, the reasons for it were true to form. Additions to the Abbotsford estate had compounded a financial situation already so vulnerable that, as the self-styled ‘Laird’ confessed, ‘while my trees grow and my fountain fills, my purse, in an inverse ratio, sinks to zero’.² In short, having pushed for an exceptionally large advance from his publisher, Scott had no choice but to try to write his way out of debt.