Shock, Memory and the Unconscious in Victorian Fiction

Cambridge Studies in Nineteenth-Century Literature and Culture

by Jill L. Matus

Jill Matus explores shock in Victorian fiction and psychology with startling results that reconfigure the history of trauma theory. Central to Victorian thinking about consciousness and emotion, shock is a concept that challenged earlier ideas about the relationship between mind and body. Although the new materialist psychology of the mid-nineteenth century made possible the very concept of a wound to the psyche - the recognition, for example, that those who escaped physically unscathed from train crashes or other overwhelming experiences might still have been injured in some significant way - it was Victorian fiction, with its complex explorations of the inner life of the individual and accounts of upheavals in personal identity, that most fully articulated the idea of the haunted, possessed and traumatized subject. This wide-ranging book reshapes our understanding of Victorian theories of mind and memory and reveals the relevance of nineteenth-century culture to contemporary theories of trauma.

Genres: Nonfiction

264 pages, Paperback

First published September 10, 2009

Reviews

[Claire]

The most valuable thing I gained from reading this is Matus' historical approach to the topic. She is keenly aware of the importance of historical situating her understanding of trauma/shock and does so consistently with excellent historical evidence, but also doesn't close herself off completely to contemporary ideas about trauma. This serves to 1) place trauma studies on a continuum, displaying how our current conceptions of the issue have developed from Victorian ideas of shock, as well as 2) add to my understanding of what trauma studies is. In that I mean that a purely historical approach, completely ignoring contemporary views, would teach me a lot about shock/memory/the unconscious/etc. in the Victorian era, but little to nothing about trauma studies as a whole. The balance that she strikes between focusing on the historical while allowing for analyses of the contemporary to enter the conversation really adds to my understanding of trauma as a whole.

Her prose is a little dense (to be expected, but still negatively affected my reading experience a little) and my interest did not lie so much in the focused close readings of the various texts, so that's what brought the rating down a little. But I will say that this is probably the best text to learn about Victorian conceptions of the issues mentioned in the title, as well as to glean some information about how to approach such strongly historical situated concepts that /seem/ like they align with our current conceptions, but are actually different in many subtle, yet crucial, ways.