Felicity Epps on A Grave Inheritance: Victorian Hysteria, Anxiety, and Gothic Power
Felicity Epps on A Grave Inheritance: Victorian Hysteria, Anxiety, and Gothic Power
It’s no surprise that many of us struggle with anxiety when the future feels full of uncertainty and modern life conjures so many stressors. But how do our modern-day attitudes towards mental health compare to the “nerves” of our anxious Victorian-era counterparts?
In my debut novel, A Grave Inheritance, the main character Dolores Rain struggles to manage her anxiety and panic attacks – with the added hurdle of growing up in Victorian London. Dolores is dismissed by her doctor, who recommends fresh air, cold baths and eventually an asylum. Where else would the Victorians send their troublesome women?
Having suffered from panic attacks myself, I found inspiration for the novel by researching historical views on anxiety. Victorian women were seen as having naturally weaker nerves that could descend into hysteria if they weren’t kept in check. The symptoms of hysteria were so wide-ranging that it became a catch-all term for doctors to diagnose various offences, from unhappiness to restlessness – and even requesting a divorce! Victorian women already carried smelling salts to revive themselves if they felt faint, but anything overstimulating (like a spooky gothic novel!) could similarly upset one’s nerves.
With so many symptoms of hysteria, there were just as many supposed cures! A Victorian doctor might recommend the Rest Cure, which involved prolonged isolation confined to one’s bed, or the Sea Cure, which advised regimented exposure to the bracing winds and waves of the seaside. An asylum was also seen as a respectable way of keeping a woman’s unpredictable symptoms out of the public eye. This led to cases of perfectly sane women being locked in asylums because their husbands willed it – whether out of genuine concern or simply as a punishment.
In Victorian newspapers, you might stumble across advertisements for apothecary shops and nerve tonics, promising to soothe an anxious mind. These tonics were dangerously unregulated, with poisonous recipes including strychnine and arsenic. My character Dolores seeks out an apothecary shop, hoping that if she can confront her nerves, she can similarly uncover the ghostly disturbances in her haunted house. Up until this point, she has hidden in bed, ignoring her lingering suspicion that her older sister might have been murdered.
While researching the Victorians and their tumultuous views on anxiety and “nerves”, I discovered a prevailing belief that women who suffered from hysteria were also more attuned to the spirit world! By seeking work as spiritual mediums, Victorian women turned their supposed sensitivity into a strength, blurring the lines between mental health and the era’s obsession with ghosts. Dolores and her friends, Violet and Ada, find their voices by forming The Society of Free Spirits to investigate the challenges that haunt them: ghosts, murder, and the patriarchy! Of course, one should never underestimate what a trio of free-spirited young women can handle.
Into the twentieth century, the term hysteria fell out of use. Doctors became better at diagnosing and treating mental health conditions. And while anxiety still conjures spectres that so many of us can relate to, we have more options available to us in order to seek support and get sympathetic help. After all, a doctor today hopefully wouldn’t frown upon a girl’s love of gothic novels!
A Grave Inheritance by Felicity Epps is in out in paperback on 31 July, £9.99, published by Hodder Children’s Books