“We should go mad”: The madwoman and her nurse

Abstract

While the neo-Victorian madwoman has been extensively examined, many scholars tend to analyse her presence in fiction alongside the isolation and silence in which she typically exists. This chapter focuses instead on both the neo-Victorian madwoman and her nurse as physical emblems of women associated with madness. Sarah Waters’ Fingersmith (2002) and Sarah Shoemaker’s Mr. Rochester (2017) feature the female/female bonds and power dynamics established between the neo-Victorian madwoman and her nurse(s) and illustrate the position of the madwoman as a female rebel through her refusal to conform to social and patriarchal gender norms and place the nurse in a conformist, carceral space. In neo-Victorian fiction, the tension between the nineteenth-century madwoman and her illness is resolved through the dismissal of her victimhood and the indictment of her caregivers as prisoners.