病理、變態與治理：論維多利亞的感染論述

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(1)病理、變態與治理：論維多利亞的感染論述. 論文摘要. 本論文由傅柯的理論基礎為出發點，企圖探究文學作品、文化現象與社會思潮中醫學權力規訓與「傳染」知識建制的關連。本論文將標示文學作品、文化現象與醫學發展的對位互動，試圖經由比對文學作品、時代思潮與醫學史發展，開拓跨領域研究的閱讀策略，以十九世紀大英帝國空前的殖民版圖為閱讀基準，對比閱讀醫學技術、海外殖民、內在衝突與文學想像的交互關連。十九世紀後半葉的大英帝國面臨社會空前的轉變，工業革命帶來巨幅的社會變動，造就都會化人口大量集中都市、傳統農業產業與農莊生態轉變的巨大變遷，都會區人口大量聚集使得都會區衛生醫療環境立即面臨嚴峻衝擊，大量鄉村人口流入都市，亦為傳染疾病大規模流行創造有利的條件。十九世紀的英國是人類社會邁入現代化生活的重要指標，同時，大英帝國的勢力亦在此一時期達到空前壯盛的頂峰，大英帝國在海外的殖民地版圖成為人類有史以來最為壯闊的管理版圖，因應管理海外殖民地的殷切需求，大英帝國需要不斷輸出能力上得以管理殖民地的帝國菁英，而這些帝國菁英份子，亦需要從殖民母國獲得管理殖民地所需的經濟、武力與醫療支援。十九世紀同樣也是現代醫學在技術與觀念上產生大躍進的關鍵年代，隨著醫療科技在外科醫學、藥理學、微生物學、公共衛生、無菌消毒、病理解剖等領域的重大突破，西方醫學始擺脫不受信賴的傳統印象，獲得科學理性的權威。本論文試圖以醫學史的閱讀角度切入十九世紀英國文學小說，藉由對照西方醫療史的發展，閱讀文學作品中反映出的醫學想像與恐懼，進而探討醫學如何從一門科學演變成為文化史中的一門規訓，並從對照醫學與文學的閱讀中，檢視文學中的醫學論述如何型塑人們對醫學的感受認知與對現代性工具理性的追求。同時試圖探討醫學作為一門規訓，何以被帝國納入龐大的論述建制工程，並轉化為帝國對內 I.

(2) 馴化統御、對外征服管理的工具。然而，醫學的突破性發展雖然對帝國產生實質的助益，但對於帝國勢力的消退與殖民地反撲的焦慮卻未曾因醫學理性科學地位的穩固而稍獲舒緩。十九世紀末期，大英帝國勢力由極盛而衰，帝國勢力消退的焦慮以及殖民主體的崩解，也透過醫療想像在文學作品的互文脈絡中展現帝國主體面臨反殖民的焦慮不安。本論文試圖尋找在帝國勢力消退而醫學發展獲得突破發展之際，在文學創作中的醫學想像元素如何發揮塑造國族認同、規訓身體政治、擬具恐懼與魅惑交雜的多重力量。本論文企圖由閱讀十九世紀末期英國文學作品著手，藉由對比本時期迅速發達的現代醫學與文學創作，期待藉此開發更具省思內涵的閱讀角度。據此，本論文以十九世紀醫學史與同時期英語感染論述作為對位閱讀標的，探索文學與文化對醫學的想像，論究醫學在文化與文學創作中的啟示，並企圖開發大英帝國與十九世紀英國社會對醫學與主體的想像，鎖定大英帝國全盛時期，研究近代醫學精進與文學文化創作中大量充斥的醫療想像意涵，探討何以此時期盛行「傳染」的概念型塑了維多利亞時期對內界定自我以及對外界定他者的概念，並試圖分析「傳染」醫療論述對於帝國主體的建構，以及對於帝國內部子民的規訓教化以及對於殖民地的管理征服發揮的力量。並繼而討論帝國如何透過「傳染」論述的想像建構理性健康的主體，並將疾病、傳染、衰弱、腐敗的不健康因素，具體轉化為對於他者的想像。在帝國勢力消退之際，醫學規訓呈現混雜豐富的想像空間，在提供帝國主體工具理性的現代性選項之外，醫學想像元素也具體形塑他者的想像，透過醫學理性歸納分析的精確鑑定區隔，健康、無菌、理性的主體遭受疾病、傳染、瘋狂的他者反撲，醫學與疾病的想像為世紀末的大英帝國找尋一道將反殖民恐懼具象化與宣洩集體焦慮的有效管道。論文第一章簡述維多利亞感染簡史，簡述主導前期的衛生論（sanitationism）與後期的感染論（contagionism）的主要理論基礎、關鍵人物與醫學技術發展。第二章討論迪更斯小說中的衛生論，探究描述城市瀰漫氣味的感染寫實手法，以 II.

(3) 及其所代表的文化意涵與霍亂想像。第三章檢視維多利亞貧民窟論述呈現由衛生論至感染論的理論轉向，探討因醫學科技精進引發的思維模式轉變。第四章探討福爾摩斯偵探故事中隱含的失序焦慮，比對感染論述衍生的病毒入侵與免疫想像，以及隨之而來更為撲天蓋地的衛生控制。感染論述被建構成一套鑑定病理並治理變態的權衡機制，第五章以開膛手懸案的感染論述檢視何以健康的概念必然隱含正常化的權力機制。第六章企圖比對梅毒病史與《德古拉》的感染焦慮，閱讀吸血鬼傳染形塑的男性醫學權威、受害女性以及變形身體的感染政治。第七章探究冒險小說中的瘧疾傳染想像，探究帝國擴張、醫學治理與文化想像的情感結構。. III.

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(5) Pathology, Abnormality, and Governance: On Victorian Narratives of Contagions. Abstract. This dissertation explores the concept of Victorian contagions: their dominances, t he i rva r i a t i ons ,a nda bovea l l ,t he i ri mpor t a nc et oVi c t or i a ns ’i de a sofobs e s s i ona nd fear. My methodology is to focus as much as possible on individual works belonging to the realm of literature and medical history, and I piece these works together in new ways to create a rich composite of tangible and perceivable experience from Victorian culture. I read them as works inspired by great interpretative imagination or innovative science, and then make sense of their relationship to social control and individual resistance. Through this collage of literature and medical history, I try to discern the shaping principles, not only of fictions, but of lives as well. In essence, this is a dissertation about health and disease, normality and g ove r na nc e ,“ us ”a nd “ t he m, ”a s pi r a t i ona ndf e a r ,a se a c hoft he s ee l e me nt soc c ur si nt heva r i ousa nd usually confronting narratives of contagions. I explore why particular medical and technological developments occurred at particular historical moments, and how these developments interacted to formulate a culturally unique understanding of disease, medicine, and the self. The impact of medical breakthroughs is discussed in the context of Victorian social, cultural, and political developments in order to show why and how the concept of contagions assisted in shaping new Victorian ideas about pathology and abnormality. By tracing the formation of correlations among cleanliness, lighting, good ventilation, hygiene, and health in contrast to filth, staleness, dampness, and illness, I examine the emergence of governance in the good name of medicine. Narratives of contagions V.

(6) drafted in this period bore traces of medical theory, in which threats to human health were perceived as tangible; this dissertation traces the transformation from “ smelling” to “ seeing”i ns uc hc ont a g i onna r r a t i ve s . Thr oug houtt heVi c t or i a ne r a ,na r r a t i ve sof contagions were largely promoted and manipulated by an observing mentality that both regulated domestic order and facilitated imperial enterprises. Most of all, by tracing the multitude of contagions, this dissertation attempts to describe and make sense of the tangled and many-faceted significance of Victorian contagions. Chapter One of this dissertation recaps a brief history of Victorian contagions in the establishment of sanitationism and contagionism. Chapter Two is devoted to the s t udyo fDi c ke ns ’s a ni t a t i oni s tna r r a t i ve sofc ont a gi ons ,i nwhi c hs our c e sof contamination are presented as smellable. Chapter Three surveys the activation of medical normatism fluctuating between sanitationism to contagionist theories. Chapter Four focuses on the shift to contagionist narratives, in which threats to public health are specified and excluded at all costs. To adopt the notion of normatism in reading pathology, abnormality, and governance in Victorian narratives of contagions, Chapter Five continues to examine symptoms of corruption in the legacy of Jack the Ripper. Chapter Six contributes to the discussion of body politics in that quintessential Victorian tale Count Dracula, expressed in victimized women, all-powerful doctors, and the grotesque body of the vampire. Finally, Chapter Seven investigates the structural feeling of contagions in adventure stories.. VI.

(7) Acknowledgements. I needed a lot of help finishing this dissertation, and the fact that these words can now be written testifies to the generous response over many years to a nearly pathological form of my neediness. In the various stages of learning, thinking, researching, and writing, I have been fortunate to have a strong community of teachers, friends, colleagues, and family to draw upon. First of all, I would like to express my sincerest gratitude to my advisor, my mentor, and my role model, Professor Yu-cheng Lee. His enlightening courses have initiated my interest in academic studies since my M.A. program; his sagacious suggestions and insightful comments always lead me through the difficulties in research; his untiring help and generous encouragement uplift me from the shadow of despair and anxiety. This dissertation would have been impossible without his patience and guidance. I am indebted to Professor Ying-Hsiung Chou, Professor Te-Hsing Shan, Professor Kung-Liang Chuang, and Professor Jung Su, for their inspiring questions and suggestions at the stages of proposal hearing and oral defense. I have benefited greatly from their close reading and helpful advice. I also have to express my gratitude to some anonymous reviewers at different stages of rationale writing and qualification exams. Some parts of this dissertation are revised according to their suggestions. For their demanding questions and substantial comments, I cannot thank them enough. I am truly obliged to my teachers in the Department of English at National Taiwan Normal University. I am deeply grateful to Professor Hsiu-Chuan Lee, Professor Wen-Ching Ho, Professor I-Ping Liang, Professor Sun-chieh Liang, Professor Chia-chi Wu, Professor Frank Stevenson, and late Professor Po Fang, for VII.

(8) their encouragement and guidance at different stages of my learning. I shall always appreciate the invigorating environment and academic training I lavishly benefited from during my studies with their help. I am deeply indebted to Professor Michelle Tsung-yi Huang of National Taiwan University for her most inspiring course and strict discipline. I am thankful for Professor Eva Yin-I Chen of National Cheng-chi University for her training and encouragement. I am also grateful to Professor Philip Tew of Brunel University for his generous help during my research in London. This dissertation has been a labor of love and has brought me into contact with an array of exceptionally kind and intellectual individuals. It is a pleasure to be able to thank all of those who made the research and writing of this dissertation not only possible but exceedingly enjoyable. Some parts of my early findings were presented as conference papers at the Literary London, Making Sense of Health, Illness, and Disease (HID), and American Comparative Literature Association (ACLA) annual conferences. I am grateful to Nick Hubble, Rudolf Weiss, Brycchan Carey, Lawrence Phillips, David Parker, Christine Lai, and Alex Murray of the Literary London conferences; Rob Fisher, Peter Twohig, Gina Greene, Sandip Talukdar, Archie Graham, Zhenyi Li, Abeer Abdel Raouf Fahim, and Abraham Fuks of the HID conference: and Martina U. Jauch, Jane Chin Davidson, and Sayantani DasGupta of the ACLA conference. I am thankful for their excellent advice, criticism, and encouragement on some parts of this dissertation in its earlier form. I have to express my most warm-hearted appreciation for the travel grants endorsed from the Office of Research and Development of National Taiwan Normal University, the Department of International Cooperation, National Science Council, and the Foundation for the Advancement of Outstanding Scholarship. Thanks to their generous support, it became possible for me to build up confidence in presenting papers at international conferences and in future research. I am also grateful for the VIII.

(9) able assistance I enjoyed from the British Library and the Wellcome Library. I would like to thank my colleagues at Taipei Medical University for their expert knowledge of medical practice and medical history. I received helpful suggestions and comments from Dr. Da-Liang Chen, Dr. Ming-Shium Hsieh, Dr. Shang-Ying Tsai, Professor Jin-shan Chen, and Professor Wen-chi Lin. I am thankful for intellectual and financial support from the Program of Enhancing Professional Medical Education. I profited greatly my research projects granted from this program. I am most obliged to Professor Chi-Wan Lai, Dr. Fu-Chang Tsai, Professor Shang-jen Li, and Dr. Yan-Di Chang for their generous support and professional advice. Their distinguished efforts and respectful devotion to the enhancement of humanitarianism in professional medical education are illuminating to many. I am thankful to my students at Taipei Medical University. Your brilliant questions motivate me to achieve more as a teacher. I am also grateful to my colleagues at the General Education Center of Taipei Medical University, Chi-Long, Shin-yi, Yen-ping, and Li-yuan, for their able assistance and friendship. I had the good fortune to find friends who cheered me on. I can never express my appreciation properly in words to my friend Arthur Lo and his wife Szuying Lee. I enjoyed all imaginable hospitality, friendship, and delicious dinners for three summers in London. I would like to thank A-Chung, A-Ching, A-Tzi, Hsiu-Hui Yang, Chia-chi Tseng, Ginger C. Wang, Chun Fu, Yi-jen Chang, Hsiao-yin Huang, Yang Lin, and Jian-kun Hong for their helping hands at times most needed. Thank you. Over the years of my study, my family remains the most solid support behind me. My parents, as always, shared my sorrows and triumphs with an unwavering love. My brother and sister always provided me a space to indulge in their warm encouragement. Those moments laughing, kissing, and hugging in unforgettable quality time with my two little angels, Bing-deh and Bing-wei, remain a continuing IX.

(10) source of inspiration. Most of all, my wife, Tzi-yi, selflessly takes the responsibility of taking care of our little family. Her unsparing encouragement and unfailing support have meant more to me than I can adequately put into words. From them, I learn the great lesson of giving. For them, I remain thankful with affection and love.. X.

(11) Table of Contents. Introduction………………………………………………………………1 The Victorian Formation of Contagions Chapter One………………………………….……………………………25 A Brief History of Victorian Contagions Chapter Two………………………………………………………………53 “ All Smell Is Disease” : Cholera and Contagions in Charles Dickens’ Sanitationist Realism Chapter Three…………………………………………………………...…77 “ A Clean City Is a Healthy City” : Normatism and Contagions in Victorian Slum Narratives Chapter Four……………………………………………...………………109 Ways of Seeing: Sherlock Holmes, Contagionism, and the Medical Detective Chapter Five…………………………………………………...…………137 East End Prostitution and Fear of Contagions: On Narratives of the Ripper Case around 1888 Chapter Six……………………………………………………………….173 Submissive or Subversive Body: Body Politics and the Fear of Syphilis in Dracula Chapter Seven…………………………………………………………….205 For the Health of the Race: Governance and Contagions of Tropical Fever Conclusion…………………………………………………………….…233. Appendix One…………………………………………………………241 Appendix Two…………………………………………………………245 Works Cited……………………………………………………………247.

(12) Introduction: The Victorian Formation of Contagions. I will follow that system of regimen which, according to my ability and judgment, I consider for the benefit of my patients, and abstain from whatever is deleterious and mi s c hi e vous .…. Wi t hpu r i t ya ndwi t hhol i ne s sIwi l lpa s s my life and practice my Art. —The Hippocratic Oath. Nineteenth-century medicine, on the other hand, was regulated more in accordance with normality than with health. —Michel Foucault, The Birth of the Clinic. This dissertation aims to explore the concept of Victorian contagions: their domi na nc e s ,t he i rva r i a t i ons ,a nda bovea l l ,t he i ri mpor t a nc et oVi c t or i a ns ’i de a sof obsession and fear. My methodology is to focus as much as possible on individual works belonging to the realm of literature and medical history. I want to piece together in new ways a rich composite of tangible and perceivable experience from Victorian culture. I mean to read these works as being inspired by great interpretative imagination or innovative science, and then to make sense of their relationship to social control and individual resistance. Through this collage of literature and medical history, I try to discern the shaping principles, not only of fictions, but of lives as well. In essence, this is a dissertation about health and disease, about aspiration and fear, 1.

(13) a boutnor ma l i t ya ndg ove r na nc e ,a bout“ us ”a nd“ t he m, ”a se a c hoft he s ee l e me nt si s brought about by the various and usually opposing narratives of contagions. Throughout the Victorian period, issues of contagions were intensely discussed at the level of national interest. From time to time, freedom from fear of contagions was considered the welfare and right granted to citizens. Such privilege was often embodied in the regulation of filth and the exclusion of all possible sources of contamination. Earlier in the Victorian period, social engineering in terms of building sewage systems, constructing ventilated houses, and providing safe drinking water was highly promoted by activists such as Edwin Chadwick (1800–1890), John Snow (1813–1858), and Florence Nightingale (1820–1910). As a result of intensive and pervasive collaboration, advances in public health campaigns greatly augmented the dominance of governmental authority over individuals. Even if there were debates about the sacrifice of individual interest or intrusion of privacy, in the end, concerns about public welfare prevailed. Advoc a t e swhoc l a i me dt ha t“ ac l e a nc i t yi sahe a l t hy c i t y ”we r eboos t i nga wa r e ne s sof“ t hehe a l t hoft her a c e . ”Me dical narratives during this period largely followed heritages of Hippocrates miasma disciplines in which disease is not caused by specified source of contamination but by the disturbance of balance in bodily humors and the outer environment. Therefore, seeking and maintaining the equilibrium of physical, psychological, and environmental factors remains the primal objectives in maintaining health. Public health campaigners drew attention to what they dubbed an “ a r s e na lofde a t h, ”referring to filth and foul odors accumulated from factory waste, refuse dumps, and human excrement that would most likely to be the sources of untimely and unknown epidemics. The idea of a poisonous miasma became a staple of social discourse in which literary creations, clinical observations, and social movements cohered with the “ g os pe lofc l e a nl i ne s s . ” The emergence of public health campaigns was primarily accentuated with a sense of 2.

(14) urgency and prominence. At the axis of the coercive public health regulation was a collective determination to enforce strict hygienic regulations, both medically and morally by definition, to keep society clean and healthy. However, the Victorian discourse of contagions was not only about social control. Narratives of filth prominent earlier in this period began to transform as late as the 1880s, when a radical, bloodless, and scientific medical revolution, started to change major aspects of the Victorian world. In the sweeping medical statements of Louis Pasteur (1822–1895), along with the great medical breakthroughs by Rudolf Virchow (1821–1902), Robert Koch (1843–1910), Ferdinand Cohn (1828–1898), Joseph Lister (1827–1912), Patrick Manson (1844–1922), and Ronald Ross (1857–1932), to name just a few, the germ theory of disease gained prominence over the traditional principles of miasma theory. With the discovery of microbes and the confirmation of an association between bacteria and contagions, the findings of scientists opened up a new way of seeing. Medical breakthroughs helped establish a new dimension of knowledge, as cells—not organs or tissues, as had been firmly held since the eighteenth century—were seen as the fundamental units of biological activity. The microscopic perspective transformed medical practice and related studies in physiology, pathology, histology, and embryology. The effort to find a balance between the human body and its surrounding environment was intensely debated. Attempts by civil engineering and government administration to exclude sources of pollution were no longer the sole and dominant guiding principle in sustaining public health. The germ theory inculcated a new and much more explicit attempt to locate the causes of disease through verified sources, vectors, and routes of transmission. In short, this advancement in theory reinforced notions of disease specificity. Microscopic vision in medicine helped to equate disease with a more accurate di me ns i onofa ni ndi vi dua l ’ sl i f ea ndt hef unc t i onoft hes t a t e . Tos um up,t hemos t 3.

(15) groundbreaking transformation in this new way of seeing was about endeavors to learn to see things microscopically. This alteration alone changed the way people looked at things once and for all. The new way of seeing profoundly impacted Victorian society. As microbes invisible to the naked human eye were conceived as the source of many diseases, it became self-evident that a more pervasive and efficient practice of surveillance over individual health should be made mandatory. Social control over the individual body was practiced with precision and proficiency. Meanwhile, paradoxically, collaborative efforts to designate and determine possible causes of infection not only aroused a sense of security, but also induced a pervasive sense of anxiety. At the core of this shared sentiment was an intricate fascination with contamination, degeneration, and invasion enflamed by the qualities of proliferation and penetration in contagions. Human beings were visualized as living with a great variety of combinations of molecules and were thus considered exposed to multiple sources of contamination. The notion of microorganisms penetrating the immune system and taking control of human health transformed into a cultural metaphor widely adopted in the public imagination. Just as the increased capacity of medicine aided in personifying microorganism as intruders, Victorians gradually became aware that no one was safe from contagion. The empowerment inherent in seeing microscopically did not assure the Victorians a sense of invulnerability. As all means of protection and control were subject to unknown forms of invasion, this new way of seeing seemed to promise more anxiety regarding the unexpected and unceasing intrusion of contagions. The Victorian discourse of contagions was a permeable territory increasingly invulnerable to the manipulations of evolving public authorities, such as the educational and legal systems, the medical establishment, and the apparatus of social welfare. The development of such discourse was supported by the fact that contagions 4.

(16) were unquestioned and—as the cases of pandemics remained unknown—unquestionable. The unfathomable quality of contagions made them popular among public categories in Victorian narratives. Publicly and politically imagined, the concept of contagions was sensationally represented either as attacking victimized innocents imperiled by the social cruelties of injustice, or as indocile rebels obtained by indulging in corruption. The multitude of representations of endangered or endangering individuals under the shadow of contagions made these writings a salient phenomenon in Victorian writings. A panorama of narratives emerged, ranging from the iconic fiction of Charles Dickens (1818–1870), the sociological works of Henry Mayhew (1812–1887), Charles Booth (1840–1916), and Friedrich Engels (1820–1895), the detective stories of Arthur Conan Doyle (1859–1930), the adventure stories of H. Rider Haggard (1856–1925), and the imperial gothic fiction of Bram Stoker (1847-1912), to the slum narratives of Margaret Harkness (1854–1923), Arthur Morrison (1863–1945), and Jack London (1876–1916). Among these writings, there were notions of contagions routinely presented as the axis of an evolving society bent on medical and scientific progress, especially in the discourse of medical revolution and social reform. The discourse of contagions in the Victorian period was largely but not completely initiated and sustained by developments in medicine. In many ways, the public understanding and imagination of contagions was so malleable and permeable that variations in the concept could find embodiment in the various dimensions of social discourse. Either as representations of a lifestyle or witnesses of social movements, narratives of contagions might be both an artifact of Victorian cleansing and an act of imagining the city and the state. The discursive formation of contagions could include applications of Victorian aesthetics to contemporary objects. They might also contain speculative extension of medical technologies in their 5.

(17) interpretations of current issues. They might even deliberately visualize conditions of anachronistic importation of contemporary science into fictionalized pasts and projected futures. In examining the dominance of Victorian contagions, I want to ask new questions about the place of medicine in Victorian narratives. How are stories of victimized innocents plagued by filth and dirt told in culturally unique ways? Why are stories of degeneration told in other specific and culturally unique ways? How are these stories associated with the emergence and transformation of medical discourse during this particular era? How might we differently understand these Victorian narratives if we read them as a formation of cultural, social, and medical discourse? What can be learned by interpreting the concept of contagions as a widespread social phenomenon recognizable in literary and cultural discourse? What can be learned by reading the transformation of medical discourse that not only shaped the way Victorians looked at the world, but continues to hold us in its sway? How, in short, can we point out ways in which the decorous clash of medical disciplines coalesced in the formation and transformation of Victorian contagions? How, in the end, does our understanding of Victorian contagions relentlessly influence our perception of ourselves? With readings of the exchange, interchange, and transformation of the Victorian narratives of contagions, this dissertation explores the link between the emergence of the concept of contagions and its cultural evolution into scientific, medical, and social narratives. I conduct a contrapuntal reading of medicine and literature in interweaving cultural narratives of contagions with an up-to-date understanding of contemporary medical developments.1 By contrapuntal, Edward W. Said refers to the polyphony 1. For a clearer comprehension of the contrapuntal interaction between medicine and narratives of contagions, please refer to the chronicle of Victorian contagions and publications of major works in Appendix 1. 6.

(18) qua l i t yo fmus i ci nwhi c h“ va r i oust he me spl a yof fonea not he r ,wi t honl ya pr ovi s i ona lpr i vi l e g eg i ve nt oa nypa r t i c ul a rone ”( Culture 51). By contrapuntal reading, Said aims at sort i ngoutt he“ or g a ni z e di nt e r pl a yt ha tde r i ve sf r om t het he me s , notf r om ar i g or ousme l odi corf or ma lpr i nc i pl eout s i det hewor k”( Culture 51). My a t t e mpt si nc ont r a punt a lr e a di nga f t e rSa i da i msa tunc ove r i ngt he“ s ubme r g e dbut c r uc i a lpr e s e nc e ”of“ c ompl ementarity and interdependence instead of isolated, venerated, or formalized experience that excludes and forbids the hybridizing i nt r us i on sofhuma nhi s t or y ”( Sa i d , Culture 96). This dissertation is a comparative study of medicine and literature, but is also more than simply comparison. My interest lies in both capturing the variation within the structure of medical history and Victorian writings of contagions and yet, simultaneously, in making sense of the correlation that these variations comprise. I want to explore how particular medical and technological developments occurring at specific historical moments interacted to formulate a culturally unique understanding of disease, medicine, and the self. The impacts of medical breakthroughs are discussed in the context of Victorian social, cultural, and political developments in order to show why and how the concept of contagions assisted in shaping the Victorian formation of pathology and abnormality. By tracing the formation of correlations among cleanliness, lighting, good ventilation, hygiene, and health in contrast to filth, staleness, dampness, and illness, I venture into examinations of the emergence of governance in the name of good medicine. Narratives of contagions drafted in this period bore traces of medical theory in which threats to human health were perceived as tangible. This dissertation seeks the transformation of narratives of contagions from “ smelling”to “ seeing. ”Ei t he rwa y ,na r r a t i ve sof contagions were largely promoted and manipulated by an observing mentality that both regulated domestic order and facilitated imperial enterprises. Most of all, by 7.

(19) tracing the multitude of contagions, this dissertation attempts to describe and make sense of the tangled and many-faceted significance of Victorian contagions.. The Normal versus the Abnormal. Narratives of contagions are, in essence, partial practices and formations of a larger scope of medical discourse. In a sense, to talk about contagions is to talk about medicine with more specified and specialized awareness of references. Both serve as a n“ ot h e r i ng ”l a ng ua g e ;bot hf unc t i ont odi s t i ng ui s hwhi c hi she a l t hy ,a ndwhi c hi s about to be unhealthy; both strive to sentence the verdict of medication. In many ways, narratives of contagions share the same pool of resources with medicine, only with more notable emphasis on certain issues (in distinguishing the pathological other, for example). Therefore, to define and discuss contagions, knowledge of medicine is indispensable to the construction of a complete vocabulary and semantics. In this sense, before issues of contagions are summoned for examination, some essential features of medicine should be clarified. One of the most substantial and vigorous facets of its apparatuses is that medicine provides a criterion in measuring abnormality. Human knowledge is culturally shaped and constituted in relation to distinctive forms of life and social organizations, as are accounts of medical knowledge and the practice of medicine. Medical discourse is not only defined by real experiences of getting sick but also formulated by our concepts of moral and ethical considerations. Medicine, therefore, is not merely based on clinical practice or abstract theories. As medical historian Charles E. Rosenberg proclaims,“ Medicine is behavior as well as cognition; it is the everyday life of village apothecaries as well as the lectures and e xpe r i me nt sofpr of e s s or s ”(4). Since medicine is a product of social construction, any 8.

(20) attempt to make sense of it should try at least to interpret its social and cultural implications. This is why when issues of medicine are brought under scrutiny in this text, I consistently make efforts to historicize and contextualize my discussion. In this respect, medical science in part performs “ a ni de ol og i c a lf or ma t i on”that facilitates “ ar i c hcultural language”with “ ahi g hl ys pe c i a l i z e dve r s i onofr e a l i t yand system of social relations”( Good5, italics original). When employed in practice, this me di c a ll a ng ua g ea s s oc i a t e s“ de e pmor a lc onc e r ns ”wi t hi t s“ mor eobvi oust e c hni c a l f unc t i ons ”(Good 5). In other words, medicine is constructed and constricted by the “ hi s t or i c a la ndc ont e xt ua lunderstanding”or“ s oc i a lpr oc e s sofne g ot i a t i on”oft he social and cultural context (Aronowitz 1). Even what we classify as wellness or illness is largely determined by the interactions of social factors, such as attitude toward disease, belief in the cause of disease and method of therapy, social relations between the healer and the sick, and even ideas of medical knowledge and technology. Accordingly, meanings of medicine are formulated through a complicated network of practices in which the patients, their family members, medical caregivers and healers, and associates all take part. Formative practices of medicine are not composed of enclosed accounts of jargons and expertise. Quite the opposite: in fact, a horde of alternative and interactive perspectives from various members of practice also participate in the making of significance. Discourses of medicine, similar to any kind of significance in language, are likewise socially and culturally devised and distributed. Some of the most urgent and evident questions to ask about the social construction of medicine are: What is disease? Who defines disease? And who has the authority and expertise to decide when symptoms become disease? These concerns necessarily lead to an interrogation of power-knowledge relationships in medicine: that is, who is in the position to define and decide? 9.

(21) Georges Canguilhem, in his discussion of how different ages form their ontological representations of sickness, points outt ha tme di c i nef or mul a t e sa“ nor m” with which one can scientifically restore and assure the normal and annul the pathological. This norm of medicine is crucial for forming medical knowledge, tackling diseases, and safeguarding t hehe a l t hofi ndi vi dua l s .“ Tog ove r ndi s e a s e , ”a s Ca ng ui l h e ma s s e r t s ,“ me a nst obe c omea c qua i nt e dwi t hi t sr e l a t i onswi t ht henor ma l state, which the living man—loving life—wa nt st or e g a i n”( Normal 41). Following this, knowledge of medicine officiates at the normalization of whatever state we call healthy in contrast to the pathologization of conditions we regard as illness, malady, sickness, degeneration, or dysfunction. A very simple but consistently applied axiom is therefore certified. Whatever deemed healthy bears positive social and cultural inferences and whatever condemned as diseased carries negative significance. As Canguilhem notes, Excess or deficiency exists in relation to a scale deemed valid and suitable—hence in relation to a norm. To define the abnormal as too much or too little is to recognize the normative character of the so-called normal state. This normal or physiological state is no longer simply a disposition which can be revealed and explained as a fact, but a manifestation of an attachment to some value. (Normal 56–7) The normal conforms to the rule and the regular. Or, to put it another way, the normal is what it ought to be, and the abnormal is what it fails to be. That is to say, the normal (the status generally referred to as health) is defined in contrast to the abnormal (the condition defined as disease or illness). Following this concept, in order to maintain the status of health, disease becomes the object of intensive observation, evaluation, and medication. Diseases have to be delimited and determined for further chance of investigation in order to bring excess or deficiency back to the requirement of the 10.

(22) norm. The notion of adjusting the normal in contrast to the abnormal is at the core of the modus operandi of medicine. In the realm of public perception of medicine, what is normal and what is abnormal are even less defined under the microscopic lenses of the research laboratory, but are more overtly determined by social and cultural implications. As Frances B. McCrea rightly puts it,“ de f i ni t i onsofhe a l t ha ndi l l ne s s are socially constructed and … t he s ede f i ni t i onsa r ei nhe r e nt l ypol i t i c a l ”( 188) . Medicine is political in the sense that its norm encompasses and excludes all deviant behaviors or elements as immoral, sinful, or criminal. In other words, what is circumscribed as healthy should meet the elucidation of the norm as promising “ whol e ne s s ,ha r mony ,and well-functioning”in authenticating “ the experience of life as a promise of good”( Mor da c c ia ndSobe l108,italics original). Afterward, in order to maintain the ultimate good of the norm, practices of medicine become a form of social control in excluding, repressing, or curbing all bad factors endangering the wholeness of health. Medicine should always remain active in seeking out the abnormality in illness: One of the greatest ambitions of the physics is to discover and describe a new disease or syndrome and to be immortalized by having his name used to identify the disease. Medicine, then, is oriented to seeking out and finding illness, which is to say that it seeks to create social meanings of illness where that meaning or interpretation was lacking before. And insofar as illness is defined as something bad—to be eradicated or contained—medicine plays the role of ….“ mor a le nt r e pr e ne ur . ”( Fr e i ds on 252) Medicine is essentially an evaluative notion in which health is regarded as normalcy, while disease is regarded as deviance. In accordance with this mentality of value 11.

(23) judgment inlaid in practices of medicine, the mechanism of ethical relativism is thus sanctioned to endorse a statement of observation and assessment. The guiding principles: health is good, disease is bad; the normal is natural, the abnormal is pathological. Disease, presented either as invisible infection of microorganism or malfunction of body organs, thus provides a measurement of disequilibrium or discordance, the most prototypical mode of deviance. In this aspect, disease is unravele da s“ ame di c al di s or de r ”( Cl ous e re ta l .93) . The ultimate device for envisioning disease lies in the presumption that disease is marked by negative elements, as what is not or what fails to be. Whatever is t e r me dadi s e a s es i g ni f i c a nt l yde s i g na t e s“ t hei nt r us i onofa n e xt r i ns i core xog e nousf a c t ororf a c t or st ha tha dbe e norwoul dbei de nt i f i e d” (Holstein 210). Causes of diseases are conceived as either intimidations from the outside or malignance from the inside, thus providing grounds for envisaging the threat from the “ other. ” As the encroachments from exterior factors magnify, negative features such as worsened symptoms of degeneration are liable to endanger the normative attributes of health. As a matter of fact, medical features of degeneration and malfunction are more noticeable and recognizable to the observers. In clinical practices, the criterion of normalcy is usually counter-defined by abnormal traits. As Martin Wallen argues, we can never sufficiently define health, but we can circumscribe the unhealthy. The essential statement confirmed here is that health is situated in contrast to illness and disease. At the level of making significance, there is the abiding truth: after we exclude and deduct all negative features that illustrate illness and disease, we have an inviolate status of health. Wallen elaborates on the dichotomy of health and disease by introducing an association with the distinction Socrates makes in the Republic. In Wallen’ s argument, Socrates establishes a model of inner space delineated through 12.

(24) defense against the outer. Inside the city of health, we find citizens who are able to protect the entire city against the chaos of disease. Soc r a t e s ’description of the healthy city is intended to be “ an analogy of the just, or healthy, individual”who undertakes to unify himself into “ a coherent and meaningful identity”(Wallen 2).. The Abnormal and the Pathological. How knowledge of medicine affects the understanding of human nature has long been an intellectual curiosity. The correlation between how we conceive our body and how we respond to the world on the basis of understanding ourselves has also long been a philosophical issue. Among the continuous endeavors to examine the correlation between medicine and human behavior, Michel Foucault is one of the most inspiring and influential thinkers in Western philosophical history. His research on sexuality, politics, population, territory, law, medicine, and political economy situates him in a most prominent position of confronting the problems of life, with the concepts of life seen in medical, anatomical, biological, and juridical terms. Foucault’ s accounts of power, knowledge, the penal panopticon, and biopolitics increasingly reduce our rich, complex, and multiple human lives to biological and medical survival which is subject to minute surveillance. According to Foucault, biological life is the battleground for the game of power and knowledge. Foucault’ s reading of biological life necessarily leads to a reading of the pathologized body where all composing substances are turned into analyzable, manipulable, and normalizable factors of the life form. In consequence, the manipulation of power and knowledge acting upon life forms is maintained across the information, institution, and instruction of the knowledge of life. Reading Foucault involves studies of biopower or biopolitics, as Foucault tends 13.

(25) to use these two terms i nt e r c ha nge a bl y . Thema i nc onc e r nove rFouc a ul t ’ ss t r a t e gy bolsters the critique of political organicism and its understanding of life. His account of biopolitics, in a simplified form, is mainly formulated on the basis of two interacting arguments. One the one hand, there is an explicit historical statement about a change in the nature of power in modern Western societies, mostly Paris, starting from the eighteenth into the early nineteenth century. On the other hand, there remains an implicit submerging of philosophical agreement about how we should understand the nature of life and how we associate the significance of knowledge/power in accordance with historical changes. In the following chapters, I continue to apply and rethink Foucault’ s two arguments in accordance with historical developments of medical advancements and the correlative effects on the understanding of Victorian contagions.2 Throughout Fouc a ul t ’ sremarkable career, issues related to medicine always closely accompanied his intellectual inquiry.3 However, Foucault did not take 2. 3. It is after Foucault’ s accounts of knowledge, discipline, surveillance, and population that this dissertation attempts to continue with a contrapuntal reading of medicine, governance, and Victorian narratives of contagions. In my reading of the correlations of science, bureaucratic affiliations, and literary production, Foucault remains the dominant and axiomatic force. However, I am fully aware of the limitation and specificity in Foucault’ sconcerns. It is undeniable that Foucault’ s scholarship is mainly France-oriented, or to be more specific, Paris-oriented. Foucault focused on the historical, social, and cultural backgrounds of eighteenth-century Paris, and many of his approaches, such as his readings of pastoral, confessions, and anatomy-politics are based upon the well-established Continental Christianity. It has to be emphasized that Foucault’ s concern with medicine and power is highly contextual and unique to the social, cultural, political, and economic background of Paris in the eighteenth century. In this dissertation, whenever any Foucauldian reading is applied, this notion of cultural and social disparity is always highlighted in the mind of its writer. In addition, any notion that blurs the rich differences across the gap of eighteenth-century Paris and nineteenth-century London is avoided by any means possible. The notions of body, power, and discipline were central concerns throughout Foucault’ s career. A great majority of his publication included topics of medicine to illustrate his philosophical inquiry. Ever since his book on the history of mental medicine, Madness and Civilization, the issue of mental health maintained an evident embodiment of his theory of how our bodies were disciplined and how medicine remained a form of power that helps discipline our lives. His second book published in English, The Birth of Clinic, continued his intellectual ambition to explore the age of reason in detailing the process of how modern clinical medicine is invented and applied to disciplining human bodies. His third book, The Order of Things, and his fourth, The Archaeology of Knowledge, although not directly involved with medical history in the eighteenth century, became the foundations for his consistent interest in relations among power, discipline, and body. It was after the fifth book in English, I, Pierre Rivière, Having Slaughtered My Mother, My Sister, and My Brother, that his concern for medical history drew him back to the route he had already begun. Since then, 14.

(26) medicine at face value in chronicling evolutions in medical science and patient caring. Fouc a ul t ’ sconsistent concerns are twofold. He was, firstly, motivated by a resolution to disclose the “ archaeological”knowledge of medicine with which multiple yet repressed minor discourses of the episteme of medicine are excavated. Secondly, he was motivated by an aspiration to regenerate t he“ g e ne a l og i c a l ”knowledge of medicine in which the “ interplays of differences, distances, substitutions, [and] transformations”of knowledge systems become “ too heterogeneous to be linked together and arranged in a single figure”(Archaeology 37).4 As Foucault fervently notes ,t he“ practice of medicine is not limited to combining a rigorous science and an uncertain tradition to form an unstable blend; it is built as a knowledge system that has its own balance and coherence”(“ Candidacy”6).5 What Foucault attempts to describe is never merely the transformation of how medicine is invented and applied. Furthermore, Foucault is more preoccupied by relentless inquiries into how knowledge of medicine is introduced to the system of scientific knowledge, how it takes on a prescriptive value, and how it becomes a reference for ethical standards. Foucault’ st he or yi sl a r g e l ye s t a bl i s he dont hes t udyofthe discursive formation and the scrutiny of the correlations between medicine, discipline, knowledge, the judicial system, and the punitive and panopticon society. His rendering of the. 4. 5. Foucault’ s books, Discipline and Punish and the three volumes of The History of Sexuality, were all closely associated with the concerns that initiated his career, while shifting emphasis in his approach to the issues of body, power and discipline. Throughout Foucault’ s discussions of how the human body was conceived, shaped, disciplined, and even punished, the multifarious relevances of health, illness, and disease were always significant. Similarly, Foucault emphasizes the complexities of the correlation of knowledge and power as he defends himself in an interview: “ I am trying to see how these processes may have interfered with one another in the formation of a scientific domain, a political structure, a moral practice” (“ Polemics” 116). Or, as Foucault claims in the Candidacy Presentation to the Collège de France in 1969, what remains at the center of his concern is “ a whole exact and articulated knowledge”that is involved with “ complex institutional systems”(5). Foucault is concerned not with just the practice of medicine, but also how the system of knowledge and power is established in correspondence with medicine. What Foucault attempts to inquire about is not just the history of medicine, nor the development of politics, nor the evolution of punishment, but the overall interaction and correlation of how medicine, psychiatry, penal justice, criminology, and government are formed and re-for me di na“ di s c u r s i v epractice”(“ Knowledge”11). 15.

(27) archaeological and genealogical inquisition renounces previous methodology in historical and philosophical studies. Fouc a ul t ’ suna s s a i l a bl er e nova t i oni n methodology imposes upon my interest in this study in two ways. First, Foucault demonstrates how seemingly unrelated fields could actually be aligned in the formation of a discourse. He explains why and how the transformation of discursive practice is tied to the whole, and he also demonstrates why and how knowledge of medicine is formed with “ a system of communication, registration, accumulation, and displacement that is in itself a form of power, linked in its existence and its functioning to other forms of powe r ”(“ Penal”17). The point in indicating the discursive formation is to illustrate a “ regularity”or “ normality”of the discourse. Following this assumption, any attempt in violation, deformation, or deviation should be subject to investigation, regulation, or punishment. In this sense, Foucault demonstrates how medicine helps set up knowledge of punitive tactics in defining the notion of crime and thus deciding the necessity or severity of punishment. In a society where bodies are regulated, the violation of “ regularity”in mentality or morality should therefore be punished in due portion. Thus, medicine becomes “ a science of the normality of bodies”resorting to finding a place “ at the center of penal practices” (“ Punitive”35). With the institutionalization of hospitals, the professionalization of medicine, and the conceptualization of pathology, “ t hetheory and practice of hospitalization and the practice of interment are launched in accordance with knowledge of medicine”(“ Psychiatric”40–3). This dissertation, in this sense, is an attempt to associate issues of contagions to a combination of seemingly unconnected elements of the Victorian discourse of regulation, governance, and manipulation. The second influence from Foucault on my study is his analysis of episteme. By episteme, Foucault does not refer to a world view. Episteme is for Foucault considered notonl y“ a slice of history common to all branches of knowledge. ”By 16.

(28) episteme, Foucault suggests “ the total set of relations”that unites “ the discursive practices”and “ give[s] rise to epistemological figures, sciences, and possibly formalized systems”(Archaeology 191). Episteme in this sense is “ not a motionless figure that appeared one day with the mission of effacing all that preceded it,”but “ a constantly moving set of articulations, shifts, and coincidences”(Archaeology 192). Accordingly, the Victorian episteme of contagions, as allocated and supplemented by a constantly moving set of relations in medicine, culture, and literature, is prone to all kinds of transformations and variations. Al li na l l ,Fouc a ul t ’ si mpa c tont hi sdi s s e r t a t i onl i e si nt hec or r e l a t i onoft he variable totalities of medical discipline that comes to define and regulate aberrant sources of contagions. And if the regulation of contagions should function at its maximum marginal effect, discipline is administrated in the form of punishment. Such punishment over contagions is established as a form of economy and a theory of law and crime. Finally, the moral or political justification of the right to punish is set accordingly. Att hel e ve lofa ppl i c a t i onofFouc a ul t ’ st he or y ,t hi sdi s s e r t a t i onbe ne f i t sgr e a t l y from two of his recent posthumous publications: Abnormal and Society Must Be Defended. Foucault claims that medicine is formed in correlation with all various forms of medico-legal practices in order to apply a “ technique of normalization” (Abnormal 25–6). Medicine plays a role similar to that of a judge, who really undertakes an investigation to carry on a particular mission of social protection against dangers to society. The ultimate compliance in medicine is to configure a set ofa bno r ma l i t i e sa s“ mons t e r s ”uponwhi c hpr a c t i t i one r spe r f or mt hepowe rof normalization. On the other hand, Society Must Be Defended examines the apparatus of collaboration between medicine and governance in the establishment of public health as a discipline. Foucault reads forms of governmental subjugation in one 17.

(29) simple concept: population. All forms of birth-rate control, health promotion, sanitation improvement, and prolongment of longevity are conjured as a set of relations (“ Birth”75, Society 239–63, “ Gove r nme nt ”83–4).. After Foucault. Foucault’ snot i onoft he“ medical gaze,”which he introduced and argued for in The Birth of the Clinic, provides a rich ground for the “ clinical”study of literature. As Foucault emphasizes the insidious disciplinary control exercised by medicine, his followers adhere to the belief that medical knowledge not only permits them to read the disease process backwards in time but also grants them the power of seeing and knowing the previously invisible and inviolable aspects of literature. Thec onc e ptof“ me di c a lg a z e ”i sbutonee xa mpl eofFouc a ul t ’ spr of ounda nd pervasive influence on recent scholarship that takes an interest in the interpretations of and interactions between medical discourse and literature. Ever since the mid-1990s, the topics of medicine and literature have attracted academic attention. There seems to be a necessarily interdisciplinary attempt to combine medicine, public health, cultural studies, sociology, and literary theory into an astonishing and promising new vantage point. It is also by enlisting theoretical challenges and historiographical shifts that academia across national boundaries venture to unsettle the assumptions of previous scholarly syntheses and call into question the terms of older debates. There is little doubt that such a pervasive and profound upsurge in intellectual interest has re-animated the established field of literary studies. Lawrence Rothfield is one of the early pioneers who launch a medicine-literature interdisciplinary approach in reading nineteenth-century novels. His book, Vital Signs, reaches for a comprehensive Foucauldian definition of the “ medical gaze.”Rothfield 18.

(30) asserts that British and French realist novelists modeled themselves after doctors, borrowing cultural authority from the distanced medical gaze of the clinician. Rothfield’ s main argument is based on the assumption that realism, like medicine, aspired to attain mimesis through exactitude in recording ordinary, unlovely facets and details. Realist novelists, in this sense, were like doctors cultivating and sustaining a clinical distance as well as a precision of observation. Foucauldian attempts in reading literature in light of medicine, in a general sense, appeared immediately after Rothfield’ s book. Interdisciplinary studies combining literature and medicine bring out exciting perspectives in reading. Miriam Bailin, in reading nineteenth-century novels, focuses on “ personal and collective meanings”of nursing narratives rather than the “ institutional constructions and deployments of sickness”(2). Likewise, Lilian Furst takes the interpersonal in a larger historical narrative by tracing patient control in the doctor-patient encounter. Furst would possibly reject being called Foucauldian in her reading of small-scale ethics. However, the theoretical foundations of opening up the doctor-patient dialogue and examining their power relationship are obviously under the sway of Foucauldian methodologies. Sexuality-induced psychological diseases, hysteria for example, provide yet another promising route for this medicine-literature interdisciplinary study. One of the founding books for this theoretical application is the well-known and highly regarded The Madwoman in the Attic by Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar. Their basic reading strategy is to take female illness in nineteenth-century English and American literature as a “ socially conditioned epidemic”(54). As feminist historians, social scientists, and literary critics, Gilbert and Gubar perfectly demonstrate the now seemingly significant relations between particular mental diseases and cultural and historical conditions. Another well-known attempt is Athena Vrettos’Somatic Fictions: Imagining Illness in Victorian Culture. Vrettos claims that it is “ difficult to find any Victorian novels that 19.

(31) do not participate in a general dialogue about sickness and health”(1). She argues that the complete interaction between nineteenth-century medical theory and narrative discourse determined how Victorian fictions of sickness and health functioned as imaginative byproducts i n“ challenging and reinforcing stereotypes of gender, class, and race”(Vretto 13–4). Vrettos proves that there is not only the desire to “ talk of disease”in nineteenth-century medical, cultural, and literary narratives, but also a hankering to examine the narrative of illness in terms of individual experiences of suffering. The concerns of sexuality, gender, and medicine soon galvanized a fervent academic interest in the study of nineteenth-century literature. Scholars, among them were such well-established feminists such as Elaine Showalter, Sander Gilman, Nina Auerbach, Gillian Beer, and Nancy Armstrong, continued to explore how medicine, psychiatry, and the biological sciences constructed womanhood and pathologized female reproductive processes.6 There are also attempts to relocate a focus on masculinity. In the process of reassessing masculinity at the fin de siècle, Andrew Smith in his Victorian Demons explains how medicine, a definitely male, white, middle-class profession, plays a vital role in its “ social mission to generate normative models of masculine behavior”(7). In comparison with this already heated research topic, my study attempts to sustain the merits of an interdisciplinary approach across medicine-literature study while seeking to advance beyond previous studies. Following Foucault, this dissertation does not merely focus on the history of medicine, nor on the confrontation of different political backgrounds or the evolution of juridical punishment. Instead, I 6. For Elaine Showalter’ s study on the topic of gender, sexuality and psychiatry, refer to The Female Malady: Women, Madness, and English Culture, 1830– 1980 and “ Syphilis, Sexuality, and the Fiction of the Fin de Siècle,”collected in Sex, Politics, and Science in the Nineteenth-Century Novel. For Sander Gilman, refer to Difference and Pathology; for Nina Auerbach, Women and he Demon; for Gillian Beer, Darwin’ s Plots; for Nancy Armstrong, Desire and Domestic Fiction. 20.

(32) try to make sense of the overall interactions and correlations of medical evolution, literary creation, imperial expansion, cultural imagination, and governmental policy making as formed and re-formed altogether in a discursive practice of contagions. My study, therefore, endeavors to draw a clearer picture of how a certain disease triggered complicated yet interrelated consequences in terms of its juridical, medical, cultural, political, social, and literary aspects. With my study of Victorian contagions, I plan to trace the discussions of biopolitics in association with the recent academic revival of interest in Foucault. While examining the evolution in medical history, I hope to explore the formation of narratives of contagions in relation to medical advancements, social movements, and literary creations. English narratives of contagions are vital for my analysis of a correlative synthesized organic ground on which interactions of medicine, literature, and colonial administration take place. An awareness of a highly interactive and interchangeable flux of disciplines is always at work in my study of the cultural and literary narratives of contagions and the transformation from the sanitationist to the contagionist assumption of medicine. In Chapter One, I try to recap a brief history of Victorian contagions in the establishment of sanitationism and contagionism. While sanitationism is motivated by an ultimate force in the congruent link between health and environment, contagionism discloses invisible causes behind all the visible effects of diseases. Even with different emphases on their communal validity, sanitationism and contagionism remain major manifestations in shaping Victorian narratives of contagions. I attempt to describe a genealogy of the theoretical development of Foucauldian notions of power, discipline, and knowledge as applied to analyzing issues of contagions in the context of Victorian London. Cha pt e rTwoi sde vot e dt ot h es t udyofDi c ke ns ’s a ni t a t i oni s tna r r a t i ve sof 21.

(33) c ont a g i ons ,i nwhi c hs our c e sofc o n t a mi na t i ona r epr e s e nt e da s“ s me l l a bl e . ”Pol l ut i on in the city is usually characterized as a threat to public health and could be corruptive to the decent sense of order, justice, and morality. With a reading of his predilection f orpr o vi di ngde pi c t i onsof“ s e e i ng”a nd“ smelling, ”this chapter argues that disease, for Dickens, transcended its textual representation in consolidating a mentality of riddance and surveillance in curing the metaphoric diseased social body. While Dickens supports the utilitarian assumption that blames poverty on ennui and inertia, he incites criticism of the oppression of victimized wretchedness. Chapter Three surveys the activation of medical normatism fluctuating between sanitationist and contagionist theories. This part of the discussion tries to conduct an archaeological study of Victorian slum narratives, ranging from the writings of Henry Mayhew, Friedrich Engels, and Margaret Harkness to that of Charles Booth, Arthur Morrison, and Jack London. This chapter focuses on the ignominious failure of replanning and rebuilding the city slum in correspondence with the induced incongruity of medical discourse. Deeply influenced by medical findings that dominate the making of norms, Victorian slum narratives are basically supported by a ni nhe r e ntme di c a lnor ma t i s mf ol l owi ngt hemot t oof“ ac l e a nc i t yi sahe a l t hyc i t y . ” Symptoms of dysfunction, disability, and degeneration are represented in pathological terms to signify a collective fear of contagions. At the same time, both sanitationist and contagionist theories of disease become evaluative notions reflecting a medical and moralist norm by which health is synonymous with balance and harmony, and disease with defecation and degeneration. Chapter Four focuses on the shift to contagionist narratives, in which incursions on public health are specified and excluded at all cost. A heroic icon to be affiliated with this observing mentality is the consultant detective Sherlock Holmes. Characteristics of this detective hero bear vivid resemblance to the function of 22.

(34) antibodies from vaccination: both are endowed with a tremendous ability in observation, an infallible power in memory, and a legitimacy in eliminating all potential threats. The detective hero is himself an embodiment of the new medical ways of seeing. To adopt the notion of normatism in reading pathology, abnormality, and governance in Victorian narratives of contagions, Chapter Five continues to examine symptoms of corruption in the legacy of Ripperology. Narratives of the Ripper concentrate on the representation of the East End in two dimensions: the geographical one that divides the city into two halves, and the biological one that segregates the same side of the city into a realm of excrement, unproductive sexuality, and unwanted lust at the lower part of the body. Connotations of social sewage that channels the “ gr e a ts oc i a le vi l ”galvanize observation of and discipline upon these “ unf or t una t e ” but “ unc a nny ”women on the street. Chapter Six contributes to the discussion of body politics expressed in the figures of victimized women, the all-powerful doctor, and the grotesque body of the vampire. I read the contagions in Dracula as a result of collective fear and fascination. By contextualizing the sensational description of biting and licking blood in Dracula and the infamous medical history of syphilis, I try to analyze the penetrating dominance of contagions in domesticated medical surveillance and compulsory punishment of diseased bodies. Recurring symptoms of vampirism suggest failures in taming female bodies and purifying their sexuality. Similarly, the enactment of medical authority paradoxically implies an opportunity for subversion of the regulation of domestic sanitation. The discipline of household order and governance of female sexuality are here interpreted as failure even in their triumph. Chapter Seven investigates the structural feeling of contagions in adventure stories. I argue that the governance of the pathological and the abnormal in tropic 23.

(35) f e ve r swa shi g hl i g ht e da tt hel e ve lofna t i ona li nt e r e s t . At y pi c a lnot i ons uc ha s“ t he future of the empire lies in the microscope ”f a c i l i t a t e st hede ve l opme ntbywhi c h medical advancements and adventure stories march hand in hand with the British Empire. In consequence, the outgoing mentality celebrated in adventure stories is highly sustained by the discursive formation of tropical fevers. The establishment of research institutes as a form of colonial governance is seen as a determined resolution to fortify the dominance of the alliance of medicine and literature. Discourse of tropical fevers combines social, medical, and literary practices into a consistent and unified vision. Such awareness is indispensable to a national identity and an epistemology fundamental to the expansion and sustenance of empire.. 24.

(36) Chapter One A Brief History of Victorian Contagions. So Sanitation, the once despised, as a political and economical department, grew and flourished, until it became, as we see it in these days, a science, a hobby, and a trade. —Edwin Chadwick, The Health of Nations. All things are hidden, obscure and debatable if the cause of the phenomena be unknown, but everything is clear if this cause be known. —Loui sPa s t e ur ,“ Ge r m The or ya ndI t sAppl i c a t i ons ”. The discourse of contagions is not a creation unique to the Victorians, nor is it a phenomenon exclusively restricted to any historical period. On the contrary, the history of contagions in literature can be traced back to the very early phases of Western civilization. Many works of Greek literature, most notably The Iliad and Oedipus Rex, begin with the arrival of a plague sent by Apollo as punishment for human transgression.1 In The Iliad, the Achaeans are being punished for Agamemnon’ s abduction of a priest’ s daughter; in Oedipus Rex, the city is punished for the sins of its king. In both, ending the plague requires recognition, repentance,. 1. Apollo, the Greek god of medicine, music, poetry, archery, and prophecy, is known in Greek mythology as the god of healing (Hamilton 30–2, Comte 46–8). However, Apollo is a complex god in his association with medicine: he is a god of healing, yet also a god of sudden death through disease, usually plagues. As the opening chapter of The Iliad de s c r i be s ,“ h i ss i l v e rbowr a ngde a t ha s h es h oth i sa r r ow”( Home r8) , Apol l ocould effectively deliver plagues by his arrows. His son, Asclepius, who eventually takes over from him most of his functions of healing, is also a god of healing (Comte 55). 25.

(37) and recompense. The theme of plague persists in literature, so that writers in different times have approached contagions in various ways to highlight various concerns. Different notions of contagions lead to different perceptions of diseases, and therefore, inspire different ways of seeing. Traditional humorist theory in the early phase of the Victorian period persistently urged seeking a balance between the inner self and the outer elements. Medical theories and practices of social reforms after this concept were generally termed sanitationism in their readings of diseases as direct results of a filth that disturbed this balance. This discourse of sanitationism was based on an exclusionist assumption that all possible diseases can be prevented and curbed if a clean and healthy environment is provided. All materials thought to be damaging or at least threatening to human health were, therefore, cleansed with immediacy and pervasiveness. On the level of discursive formation, wretched objects in city slums tended to be depicted as victims of poverty, injustice, and misfortune. In order to achieve and maintain the health of its population, Victorian England launched a series of slum cleansing and rebuilding projects at the level of government policy making. Such narratives of sanitationism culminated in a series of enactments and enforcements of public health acts. Those who were readily labeled as lacking in health standards became a discomfort and threat to all of society. Following the great discoveries of bacteria in the 1880s, medical discourse was forced to adjust and transform. Medical experts began to recognize that it was not just the balance between man and environment that kept human beings healthy. It was also the blocking of bacterial infections and the capacity for immunity that safeguarded human health from invasion of contagious diseases. With the great advancements in medical technology and collective devotion to the great discoveries of new bacteria, invisible causes behind all visible effects were recognized. As a result, bacteriology became established as a discipline, and knowledge about public sanitation and 26.

(38) individual hygiene was rapidly accumulated to be termed contagionism. As a result, doctors and medical scientists changed once and for all the way human health was approached and investigated. The evolution in medical technology and public perception altogether remodeled the way human beings and the environment were connected. With the help of the microscope, human eyes saw things that were once invisible. Thanks to the fascination kindled by such inventions, social imaginations started to explore parts of science that were formerly unreachable. The cognition that bacteria invisible to the human eye were penetrating boundaries of human bodies gradually became a widely accepted idea. As the invasion of bacteria dissolved the boundary between health and disease, sanitation and filth, and morality and degeneration, contagions were endowed with a penetrating moralist vision. This dissertation focuses on Victorian narratives of contagions for the following reasons: first, this period witnessed quite a few massive infections of contagious diseases and dramatic advancements in medical technology that in all aspects changed the way society looked at things and at itself; second, this was a crucial moment when a great governance system of regularity became active in reaping and maintaining prosperity from its dominance; third, this was also a key moment in human publishing history when cheap, massive printing was invented and a great publishing market was supported by a large readership.2 This is a very crucial changing moment in Western history, when the Industrial Revolution, medical revolution, literary production, and imperial enterprises altogether changed the way people led their lives and the way they looked at themselves. By tracing the formation of the discourse of contagions in 2. The role of the media and printing industry in the Victorian Age has been discussed by many studies. Michael Wolff and Celina Fox state that the growth of the pr e s si s“ on eoft h emos ts t r i k i ng c on c omi t a n t sofVi c t or i a nu r ba n i z a t i on ”( 559) .I twa st h ef i r s tt i mewh e nt e n soft h ous a n dsof n e ws pa pe r s ,ma g a z i n e s ,a n dr e v i e ws ,or“ s t r e e tl i t e r a t u r e ”i nNe u bu r g’ swor ds ,we r ea v a i l a bl ea ta cheap price to the general public. Moreover, it is the first time that a collective consciousness was articulated through media (Wolff and Fox 559–60, 565; Neuburg 191– 92, 198–99; Altick 60–72). Thanks to the advancement of communication via transoceanic cables and telegraphs, it was the first time the newspaper had a pervasive influence on international society (Souden 6–9). 27.