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&cat=19&pid=16913&cache=true " alt="In the attic" class="alignleft" />
The mad heroines of classic Victorian fiction have long been objects of fascination. The violent and feral Bertha Rochester in Jane Eyre, the mysterious Woman in White whose escape from an asylum begins Wilkie Collins’s gripping thriller, and the terminally delusional Emma in Madame Bovary. But were they really mad? Would we today recognise them as mentally ill or were our heroines merely misunderstood, not to mention a tad inconvenient? For Radio 4 documentary, Madwomen in the Attic, medical historians, psychiatrists and literary specialists gave their diagnoses of our troubled heroines. No restraint The picture of Mrs Rochester on all fours, baying at the moon, manic laughter ringing through the house, sadly still defines our notions of madness today. Yet even when Jane Eyre was published in 1847, Charlotte Bronte was criticised for her portrait of insanity. But Charlotte’s brother Branwell was an opium-addicted alcoholic, subject to severe depression. “While she was writing Jane Eyre downstairs,” says Anne Dinsdale, archivist at the Haworth Parsonage – where the Bronte family lived – “Branwell would have been raving in the bedroom on the second floor, where he had been confined because he was a danger. “He even set the bed on fire.” Bertha Rochester does the same in Jane Eyre. “We have a letter from Charlotte to her publisher,” says Anne, “in which she answered her critics saying that ‘the character is shocking but all too natural’.” “Bertha is the embodiment of the monstrous lunatic who requires restraint,” says historian of madness, Catherine Arnold. At the time, mental illness was regarded with shame and as evidence of familial “taint”. Even though asylums were available, secrecy was better served by keeping the sufferer confined at home, as Rochester (and the Brontes) did. There has been much speculation about the first Mrs Rochester’s madness. Notions of female insanity in the 1850s included “unrestrained behaviour,” often merely Victorian-speak for female sexuality. “Attics are where wives who cannot be contained, who are over-sexualised and unruly are stored away,” says writer and psychotherapist, Adam Phillips. And would not anyone have then gone mad, locked up in an attic with gin-sodden Grace Poole? But Dinesh Bhugra, president of the Royal College of Psychiatrists, recognises a clear description of schizophrenia in Jane Eyre. “You can rule out manic depression as there is no evidence of a mood disorder, just a chronic deteriorating condition.” Captive By the time Wilkie Collins wrote Woman in White in 1860, there were many private and public asylums, including the long established Bethlem Hospital (from which we get the word Bedlam), now the Imperial War Museum. The plot of Woman in White sounds far-fetched – wicked aristocrat Sir Percival Glyde, aided by sinister Count Fosco, plans elaborate asylum switch of sane woman (his rich wife Laura) for madwoman (the nothing-but-white wearing Anne Catherick) in order to get his hands on a fortune. But it was based on a real-life case, that of millionaire novelist and MP Bulwer Lytton who had his wife Rosina carted off to an asylum when she began to criticise him in public. She was released only after a public appeal. “If a man wanted to get rid of his wife, he would simply get two doctors to certify her and lock her up,” says John Sutherland, Emeritus professor of English Literature at University College London. “It’s what Dickens himself did when his wife kicked up a fuss at his affair.” But what about the “madwoman”, Anne Catherick? “They talk about her as being feeble-minded as a child and that she’d grow out of it – so perhaps a learning disability as we understand it,” says Dinesh Bhugra. “An asylum wasn’t necessary.” Meanwhile he points out that there are a number of plainly certifiable mad-men in Woman in White. The psychopath Fosco, for instance, or the obsessive compulsive Mr Fairlie. They are admired, not incarcerated. Frustration In the 19th Century women were thought to be intrinsically mad by virtue of their femaleness, which made them vulnerable, and women outnumbered men in Victorian asylums almost two to one. If Jane Eyre looks back to an almost medieval view of madness, Flaubert’s Madame Bovary looks forward to the age of Freud and analysis. Madame Bovary marries a dull, unsuccessful doctor called Charles. She dreams of luxury and romance and after the birth of her daughter, embarks on two ruinous affairs. A serial fantasist and shopaholic, she gets into a monstrous level of debt. When there is no way out of her debt, she takes poison and dies. It is a coolly analytic portrait of a woman unravelling. Flaubert knew of the work of Parisian neurologist Charcot (later to be a mentor of Freud) and of his descriptions of hysteria. “You could argue that Madame Bovary is a clinical case study,” says Sandra Gilbert, Professor of English at the University of California. But is Emma mad? “No she’s not mad, just very frustrated,” says Adam Phillips. And very, very irritating, perhaps particularly to women readers. “Men find her fascinating and today there is no doubt she’d be a reality TV star, living out her fantasies and celebrated – not censured – for her dreams.” Vivienne Parry presents on BBC Radio 4 at 1130 BST on Tuesday 20 April 2010 and afterwards on BBC iPlayer. This article is from the BBC News website . © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.
April 18, 2010 | Posted in
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The mad heroines of classic Victorian fiction have long been objects of fascination. The violent and feral Bertha Rochester in Jane Eyre, the mysterious Woman in White whose escape from an asylum begins Wilkie Collins’s gripping thriller, and the terminally delusional Emma in Madame Bovary. But were they really mad? Would we today recognise them as mentally ill or were our heroines merely misunderstood, not to mention a tad inconvenient? For Radio 4 documentary, Madwomen in the Attic, medical historians, psychiatrists and literary specialists gave their diagnoses of our troubled heroines. No restraint The picture of Mrs Rochester on all fours, baying at the moon, manic laughter ringing through the house, sadly still defines our notions of madness today. Yet even when Jane Eyre was published in 1847, Charlotte Bronte was criticised for her portrait of insanity. But Charlotte’s brother Branwell was an opium-addicted alcoholic, subject to severe depression. “While she was writing Jane Eyre downstairs,” says Anne Dinsdale, archivist at the Haworth Parsonage – where the Bronte family lived – “Branwell would have been raving in the bedroom on the second floor, where he had been confined because he was a danger. “He even set the bed on fire.” Bertha Rochester does the same in Jane Eyre. “We have a letter from Charlotte to her publisher,” says Anne, “in which she answered her critics saying that ‘the character is shocking but all too natural’.” “Bertha is the embodiment of the monstrous lunatic who requires restraint,” says historian of madness, Catherine Arnold. At the time, mental illness was regarded with shame and as evidence of familial “taint”. Even though asylums were available, secrecy was better served by keeping the sufferer confined at home, as Rochester (and the Brontes) did. There has been much speculation about the first Mrs Rochester’s madness. Notions of female insanity in the 1850s included “unrestrained behaviour,” often merely Victorian-speak for female sexuality. “Attics are where wives who cannot be contained, who are over-sexualised and unruly are stored away,” says writer and psychotherapist, Adam Phillips. And would not anyone have then gone mad, locked up in an attic with gin-sodden Grace Poole? But Dinesh Bhugra, president of the Royal College of Psychiatrists, recognises a clear description of schizophrenia in Jane Eyre. “You can rule out manic depression as there is no evidence of a mood disorder, just a chronic deteriorating condition.” Captive By the time Wilkie Collins wrote Woman in White in 1860, there were many private and public asylums, including the long established Bethlem Hospital (from which we get the word Bedlam), now the Imperial War Museum. The plot of Woman in White sounds far-fetched – wicked aristocrat Sir Percival Glyde, aided by sinister Count Fosco, plans elaborate asylum switch of sane woman (his rich wife Laura) for madwoman (the nothing-but-white wearing Anne Catherick) in order to get his hands on a fortune. But it was based on a real-life case, that of millionaire novelist and MP Bulwer Lytton who had his wife Rosina carted off to an asylum when she began to criticise him in public. She was released only after a public appeal. “If a man wanted to get rid of his wife, he would simply get two doctors to certify her and lock her up,” says John Sutherland, Emeritus professor of English Literature at University College London. “It’s what Dickens himself did when his wife kicked up a fuss at his affair.” But what about the “madwoman”, Anne Catherick? “They talk about her as being feeble-minded as a child and that she’d grow out of it – so perhaps a learning disability as we understand it,” says Dinesh Bhugra. “An asylum wasn’t necessary.” Meanwhile he points out that there are a number of plainly certifiable mad-men in Woman in White. The psychopath Fosco, for instance, or the obsessive compulsive Mr Fairlie. They are admired, not incarcerated. Frustration In the 19th Century women were thought to be intrinsically mad by virtue of their femaleness, which made them vulnerable, and women outnumbered men in Victorian asylums almost two to one. If Jane Eyre looks back to an almost medieval view of madness, Flaubert’s Madame Bovary looks forward to the age of Freud and analysis. Madame Bovary marries a dull, unsuccessful doctor called Charles. She dreams of luxury and romance and after the birth of her daughter, embarks on two ruinous affairs. A serial fantasist and shopaholic, she gets into a monstrous level of debt. When there is no way out of her debt, she takes poison and dies. It is a coolly analytic portrait of a woman unravelling. Flaubert knew of the work of Parisian neurologist Charcot (later to be a mentor of Freud) and of his descriptions of hysteria. “You could argue that Madame Bovary is a clinical case study,” says Sandra Gilbert, Professor of English at the University of California. But is Emma mad? “No she’s not mad, just very frustrated,” says Adam Phillips. And very, very irritating, perhaps particularly to women readers. “Men find her fascinating and today there is no doubt she’d be a reality TV star, living out her fantasies and celebrated – not censured – for her dreams.” Vivienne Parry presents on BBC Radio 4 at 1130 BST on Tuesday 20 April 2010 and afterwards on BBC iPlayer. This article is from the BBC News website . © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.
April 18, 2010 | Posted in
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Liverpool striker Fernando Torres will miss the rest of the season following knee surgery. The 26-year-old, who saw a specialist in Spain on Sunday, has been troubled by the problem for a number of weeks. A Liverpool spokesman said: “It was decided that he would need surgery on a torn cartilage in his right knee. “This will be carried out later on Sunday and, as a guide, the usual rehabilitation period for this type of procedure is around six weeks.” He is now rated as a major doubt for the World Cup with Spain’s opening game against Switzerland on 16 June. Torres, who joined Liverpool from Atletico Madrid in 2007, will also miss out on a meeting against his former club in the Europa League semi-finals. The Spaniard has scored 22 goals in all competitions this season, despite being beset by various injuries. He was sidelined for a month after a knee operation in January and before Christmas struggled with a groin injury. This article is from the BBC News website . © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.
April 18, 2010 | Posted in
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Nathan Delfouneso climbed off the bench to score his first Premier League goal and keep Aston Villa’s faint hopes of a top-four finish alive at Portsmouth. It was no more than Villa deserved, the young striker prodding home on 82 minutes from Emile Heskey’s flick-on. But it was still a little harsh on the hosts after another brave display, kick-started by Michael Brown’s curler. John Carew followed that with a drilled leveller and missed penalty among a glut of chances, but Villa won through. And it could prove a crucial intervention from 19-year-old Delfouneso, his winner pushing Villa up to sixth spot, two points ahead of Liverpool, four behind Manchester City and six off fourth-placed Tottenham. Tottenham’s defeat of Chelsea on Saturday had prompted manager Martin O’Neill to reason before kick-off that his Villa side needed to win all of their last five games to have a chance of grabbing the final Champions League spot. And despite a mixture of good goalkeeping, poor finishing and some strange decisions from referee Lee Probert, the visitors eventually secured a potentially priceless three points with four matches left in their season. Portsmouth played their part in an entertaining and remarkably open tie, though. Boosted by the return of a host of first-teamers, the hosts played with enviable freedom on the counter attack, while Villa pushed and probed the hosts’ backline with width and pace throughout. As a result, chances for both sides were aplenty. Villa keeper Brad Friedel did well to deny Kevin-Prince Boateng’s snap-shot early on, Kanu seeing his follow-up blocked, while the American also tipped a Boateng free-kick wide and charged down John Utaka well to deny the Nigerian through on goal. He could do little about Portsmouth’s opener, though, Boateng cleverly stepping over Anthony Vanden Borre’s cross and Brown curling a fine shot into the far corner for his first goal for the club. At the other end, Carew somehow fired straight at James with the goal gaping, while Marc Wilson was lucky to see his attempted clearance from Ashley Young’s cross rebound back off the post. And between those two chances, Villa deservedly drew level. Carew was the goalscorer to make amends for his earlier miss, the Norwegian – onside – dashing onto Stephen Warnock’s ball over the top, turning inside Wilson and thrashing into the roof of the net. Probert, the same official that denied Bolton two strong penalty appeals against Chelsea in midweek, then took centre stage. First he waved away Portsmouth’s shouts for a spot-kick when Richard Dunne looked to have felled Boateng clumsily in the box, and then bizarrely did likewise to Villa’s appeals despite Vanden Borre clearly hauling Agbonlahor to the ground in the home penalty area. He finally gave in on 40 minutes after Papa Boupa Diop tripped Carew, but James responded with a smart save from the striker’s penalty. It did not dent Villa’s ambition after the break, though, as the visitors continued to create chance after chance. Agbonlahor will kick himself for heading straight at James from six yards out from Young’s fine cross, while James Collins headed over unmarked soon after and Milner saw a long-ranger beaten away by the keeper. And there were two further penalty appeals waved away as well, firstly when Young appeared to be tripped by Vanden Borre and the second when Stylian Petrov went over James’s sprawling challenge in the box. For all their pressure, though, it looked like Villa would have to settle for a point and possibly downgrade their ambitions to a top-six finish as well as the minutes ticked down with Portsmouth looking increasingly comfortable. But Delfouneso had other ideas, the youngster taking just two minutes to fire home the winner after fellow substitute Heskey had flicked on Milner’s cross. Aston Villa01
April 18, 2010 | Posted in
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Afghanistan has freed three Italian aid workers held on suspicion of plotting to kill a provincial governor, Italian Foreign Minister Franco Frattini says. The three members of the medical charity Emergency were arrested on 10 April in Helmand province. The detentions came after suicide bomb vests and weapons were discovered at a hospital run by the charity in Lashkar Gah, the capital of Helmand. The employees had strongly denied the allegations against them. The charity had said it was confident its employees were innocent. This article is from the BBC News website . © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.
April 18, 2010 | Posted in
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Gordon Brown has said ending global poverty is one of the “great causes left”, as party leaders set out their plans on international development. Speaking in London at an event to mark World Poverty Day, Mr Brown said the ambition of enabling every child around the world to go to school was possible. The Lib Dems said nations must fulfil previous aid commitments, while the Tories praised the work of charities. All three parties back a goal to spend 0.7% of national income on aid by 2013. The UK currently spends 0.4% of GDP on aid annually. Speaking to a crowd in a Methodist churchyard, Mr Brown urged everyone to make “common cause” to tackle global inequality and injustice. “None of us will rest, none of us will be resting on our laurels, none of us will relax, none of us will give up, until we have made this world a world where everybody can see that justice reigns and justice rules,” he said. Schooling goal The prime minister said he had written to all aid charities to set out his vision for global co-operation in the area. He highlighted the drive to allow every child to get some form of primary education by 2015, saying this was a “basic right” for people in “every country, in every continent”. Mr Brown said, if re-elected, he would also work hard to secure a further
April 18, 2010 | Posted in
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Pope Benedict XVI has met alleged victims of sexual abuse by priests in Malta, saying the Church will do all in its power to punish abusers. The Pope also “expressed his shame and sorrow over what victims and their families have suffered”, a Vatican statement said. The meeting took place at the end of the pontiff’s visit to Malta. Three priests are accused of sexually abusing orphan children on Malta in the 1980s and 1990s. This article is from the BBC News website . © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.
April 18, 2010 | Posted in
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Sheffield Wednesday remain in the drop zone of the Championship after being denied a precious win by rivals United in a frantic derby at Hillsborough. United started the better and Darren Purse was lucky early on when his attempted clearance hit his own post. Then, against the run of play, Darren Potter volleyed home the Owls’ opener. That would have been enough to lift them out of the bottom three, but Lee Williamson’s free-kick salvaged a draw to leave Wednesday a point from safety. More to follow. Sheff Utd23
April 18, 2010 | Posted in
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Thai yellow-shirt protesters, who oppose ex-PM Thaksin Shinawatra, have given the government a week to end a political crisis or face mass action. The yellow-shirts, or Peoples’ Alliance for Democracy (PAD), are a loose grouping of royalists, businessmen and the urban middle class. They oppose the pro-Thaksin, mainly poor and rural, red-shirt protesters. Red-shirts have occupied Bangkok for more than a month in an anti-government campaign that has left 23 people dead. They say the current government came to power illegally after the military ousted an elected government in 2006 and they want Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva to dissolve parliament and quit. Financial district The yellow-shirts, who say they are defending the monarchy, held a meeting of some 3,000 supporters in Bangkok on Sunday. PAD leader Chamlong Srimuang said: “We give the government seven days to return peace to the country or we, every member of the PAD, will perform our duty under the constitution. “Prepare yourselves for the biggest rally when we will eat and sleep on the street again.” Yellow-shirt spokesman Parnthep Pourpongpan added: “In seven days we hope that the government will deal with the terrorists from Thaksin immediately, otherwise we will show our voice to protect the country and the royal family.” The yellow-shirts have been largely low-profile since the latest red-shirt protests began but in 2008 they staged a week-long blockade of airports that stranded hundreds of thousands of tourists. Yellow-shirt protests also preceded the 2006 coup that ousted Mr Thaksin. The red-shirt protests continue, with tens of thousands still in central Bangkok, despite an attempt last weekend by security forces to disperse them. The crackdown sparked the deadliest civil unrest in 18 years. The red-shirts said on Sunday they would now try to occupy the financial district. However, army spokesman Sansern Kaewkamnerd said that “we won’t let them go any further”. “Let’s say that we are left with no choice but to enforce the law,” he told local television. “Those who do wrong will get their punishment.” Mr Abhisit has refused demands to step down. On Friday he put the country’s army chief, Gen Anupong Paojinda, in charge of security operations. This article is from the BBC News website . © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.
April 18, 2010 | Posted in
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A Gwynedd councillor is being questioned by North Wales Police on suspicion of attempted murder. Gwilym Euros Roberts, 40, was arrested after an incident in Blaenau Ffestiniog on Saturday night. A woman was taken to Ysbyty Gwynedd hospital in Bangor, but her injuries are not thought to be life threatening. Mr Roberts, a member of the political group Llais Gwynedd, represents the Diffwys and Maenofferen ward in Blaenau Ffestiniog on Gwynedd council. He is also a town councillor and a prospective Llais Gwynedd candidate at the next assembly elections. This article is from the BBC News website . © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.
April 18, 2010 | Posted in
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