UC Davis

This dissertation examines clinical and literary representation and performance of hysteria in nineteenth-century France. Engaging with fin-de-siècle prose and poetry, the project analyzes literary performances of hysteria in conjunction with the clinical demonstration of the female hysteric. Focusing on Zola’s Thérèse Raquin, Rachilde’s La Jongleuse, and Rollinat’s Les Névroses, the chapters interrogate writerly movements, stylistic choices and socio-political themes that emerge from the hysterical framework popularized in a positivist culture by Jean-Martin Charcot. The dissertation begins by situating the curiosity for hysteria in medicine and culture of fin-de-siècle. Drawing on scholarship in the field of hysteria studies and French cultural history, I offer a reading of hysteria as a phenomenon or a performing body in which both the patient and doctor are conjoined by the enigma of the malady. From there, the dissertation turns to critical readings of literary works. Each chapter closely examines Charcot’s diagnostic practices and applies the lineaments of the hysteric stages, i.e., the phases of the malady as organized in his nosography, to discern an aesthetic developed from the clinical representation of hysteria. The first chapter, on Zola’s Thérèse Raquin, expands on the recurrence of paralysis in the novel as a thematic and stylistic motif. By drawing connections between Charcot’s demonstration of pathology and Zola’s naturalist writing I substantiate how Thérèse Raquin, while aligning with scientific objectivity of Charcot, goes beyond a superficial exhibition of physiology to expose the sensations of an ailing body. Chapter two probes Charcot’s notion of “clownism,” which is the second stage of hysteria. By analyzing the cultural significance of the clown figure and carnivalesque aesthetics, the chapter draws attention to the performance in the diagnostic practices of clinicians treating female hysterics, and argues that Rachilde’s La Jongleuse challenges performative agency, queer sexuality, and female autonomy. The final chapter turns to the final stage of the hysteric model, called “delirium,” which is placed in dialogue with Rollinat’s Les Névroses. This chapter situates the mode of fantastique in Rollinat’s poetry as also manifest in the clinical narratives of hysterical delirium. Analyzing the mortuary aesthetic in the poems, the chapter argues that both, textual and clinical bodies, portray the liminal paradox of the living-dead.