Anne Stiles: English Meets Mad Science
Professor Anne Stiles is recipient of the 2009-2010 Barbara Thom Long-Term Fellowship, Huntington Library, San Marino, CA. She is working on her book The Neurological Romance: Popular Fiction and Brain Science, 1865-1905. The essay collection she edited that came out in 2007 was called Neurology and Literature, 1860-1920.
Can you please tell us a little about the book?
Sure - The Neurological Romance: Popular Fiction and Brain Science, 1865-1920.The late-Victorian and early Edwardian periods witnessed watershed developments in neurological science, particularly the cerebral localization experiments of scientists like David Ferrier and John Hughlings Jackson in England, Paul Broca in France, and Gustav Fritsch and Eduard Hitzig in Germany. These experiments established that discrete sections of the brain are responsible for specific mental and physical functions, findings that stirred controversy because they apparently challenged the possibility of free will or an extra-corporeal soul. The philosophical and psychological impact of these controversial experiments resonated far beyond the professional scientific community, infiltrating the popular press and popular literature. This volume addresses the seemingly paradoxical fact that British popular novelists – those associated with commercially successful genres such as the romance, the neo-Gothic novel and the “shilling shocker” – were often extremely well informed about neurological theories and their philosophical ramifications, more so than many respected practitioners of realism. Here I examine the works of scientifically savvy popular novelists including Robert Louis Stevenson, Bram Stoker, H.G. Wells, Grant Allen, and Marie Corelli, some of the most financially successful and culturally influential authors of their time. Their fictions collectively demonstrate how popular developments like the late-Victorian revival of the Gothic served as an ideal medium for depicting the existential malaise spawned by cerebral localization experiments. In turn, their fictions profoundly shaped scientific thought and influenced public opinion toward neurological innovations.
Congratulations on winning a Huntington Fellowship! Could you tell us what you plan to do next year in California as part of your research?
I plan to finish writing and editing The Neurological Romance, and to resume work on a second project I began four years ago. This project deals with the life and work of Silas Weir Mitchell, a celebrated nineteenth-century American neurologist and novelist. After examining the Silas Weir Mitchell papers at the Philadelphia College of Physicians, I suspected that Mitchell’s punitive treatments of female neurasthenics arose from his profound insecurities about his own mental health. Like his hysteric and neurasthenic patients, Mitchell was a nervous individual with a tendency to somaticize emotional distress, resulting in disabling insomnia, headaches and stomach complaints. His letters and personal papers attest to his considerable unease in the face of such unmanning symptoms, as do his numerous short stories and novels featuring traumatized Civil War veterans. I argue that Mitchell transferred his self-loathing onto his female patients, comparing them to “vampires” and subjecting them to a mind-numbing regimen of bed-rest, isolation, and overfeeding. In this way, he distanced himself and other professional men from the mental complaints they endured but strove to hide from public view. While in Pasadena, I also look forward to taking part in seminars and workshops at the Huntington and at other libraries and colleges in the L.A. area.
What is the process you are using to research and revise this book? Is it the same for every book or are they all different?
The first book was an edited collection, so putting it together required a lot of legwork (contacting authors, reminding them about deadlines, editing their writing, etc.) I wrote the introduction to the edited collection but not the other chapters. For The Neurological Romance, I'm the sole author, so it's taking a lot more time to put it together and make sure the chapters flow from one to the next.
Please tell us your inspiration for the topic. What gave you the idea to link two such seemingly incongrous subjects?
When I started writing my dissertation at UCLA, it was about mad scientists in Victorian fiction. I read a little bit of psychology of the period to try to figure out what makes these doctors mad, and soon I was more interested in the science than the literature! So I decided to broaden the scope of the volume to neurology in a wide range of nineteenth-century popular fiction. There is still one chapter devoted to mad scientists, though (chapter four on H.G. Wells's Island of Dr. Moreau and War of the Worlds).
What advice would you give to aspiring writers?
Write about what interests you. I've always felt that if you're passionate about a topic, then you're onto something. Even if people think your topic is unfashionable or not "serious" enough. At first I was a bit scared to write about things that really interested me -- aliens and mad scientists, for instance -- because I was worried that other scholars wouldn't take me seriously. But once I let go of that fear my writing got so much better. I think I've even managed to "convert" some scholars who previously wouldn't look at sci-fi because it was too popular, but now they're interested in it.
Can you describe briefly the process you went through to publish your previous collection? When did you begin working on this revision project? When do you expect to see completion?
My advisor in graduate school was really intrigued by my dissertation topic and thought I should find out what other work was being done on neurology and literature in the Victorian period. He suggested I put out a call for papers and put together an essay collection on the topic. The first thing I did was send emails to scholars I admire, asking them to contribute essays to the collection. Since I was a totally unknown graduate student, all but one of them said no - and I think I sent out around 20 emails! But the one person who said yes was Laura Otis, whose work is amazing. Once she was on board, other scholars wanted to become involved, and things kind of snowballed from there. I submitted the collection to Palgrave in spring 2006, and they published a revised version of the collection in fall 2007. As for The Neurological Romance, I expect to have a polished draft ready to send to a prospective publisher in July. What happens next depends on the publisher. If they accept the volume, they will probably suggest a number of revisions, which I will complete during my time at the Huntington. At this point, it's hard to say precisely when the book will be published, but I hope it will appear within the next two years or so.
As a writer, who would you describe as your biggest influence? Who is your favorite historical author?
I love historians and literary scholars who can write about incredibly complex ideas but make them sound simple, and who can weave those ideas into an intriguing story. Basically I love history that's written so well it reads like a novel! Some writers I really admire are historians like Mark Micale and Anne Harrington, whose works on hysteria and mind/body interactions are both highly readable and cutting-edge scholarship. Laura Otis's work on literature and science is great, too. I also love Coral Lansbury's The Old Brown Dog (on women and vivisection in Victorian England). Lansbury was both a novelist and a Victorian scholar, and it really shows in the quality of her prose. Works like that inspire me to try and keep my writing interesting. If I could get people to really care about these aliens and zombies and mad scientists I'm writing about, and keep them turning the pages, that would be amazing. As far as literary authors, I love anything by Edith Wharton.