This innovative and critically acclaimed study successfully challenges the traditional view that Charlotte Brontë existed in a historical vacuum, by setting her work firmly within the context of Victorian psychological debate. Based on extensive local research, using texts ranging from local newspaper copy to the medical tomes in the Reverend Patrick Brontë's library, Sally Shuttleworth explores the interpenetration of economic, social, and psychological discourse in the early and mid-nineteenth century, and traces the ways in which Charlotte Brontë's texts operate in relation to this complex, often contradictory, discursive framework. Shuttleworth offers a detailed analysis of Brontë's fiction, informed by a new understanding of Victorian constructions of sexuality and insanity, and the operations of medical and psychological surveillance.

‘Invokes primary sources to explode any persistent myths that Brontë lived in a cultural vacuum.’

Source: New Scientist

‘An excellent, illuminating book.’

Rick Rylance

‘[This] has made a major contribution to Brontë studies and indicated the way forward for further studies of Brontë’s work within Victorian cultural debate.’

Christine Alexander Source: Australasian Victorian Studies Journal

‘An assured and original contributuion to the ever-expanding field of Brontë scholarship.’

Source: Anarchist Studies

‘An impressive, densely-argued book.’

Source: Journal of Victorian Culture