Mesmerism in Late Victorian Theatre

Katerina García Walsh

doi:10.5209/cjes.71586

Mesmerism in Late Victorian Theatre

Katerina García Walsh University of St. Andrews https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8001-4626

DOI: https://doi.org/10.5209/cjes.71586

Keywords: Mesmerism, hypnotism, Victorian theatre, Johan Strindberg, George Du Maurier

Abstract

Originating as a medical practice and ultimately rejected as pseudoscience, mesmerism evolved into a literary symbol in the later Victorian era. This paper focuses on three plays that use mesmerism as a symbol of marital control and domination: the comedy His Little Dodge (1896), adapted from Le Systême Ribardier (1892), by George LeFeydeau and Maurice Hennequin; Trilby (1895), adapted from the novel by George Du Maurier; and, finally, Johan Strindberg’s The Father (1893). The mesmeric power one character imposes over another, overriding both consent and awareness in the trance state, serves both to reaffirm hierarchies of power and highlight anxieties about social change in the fin-de-siècle.

Downloads

Download data is not yet available.

View citations

References

Andriopoulos, Stefan (2008). Possessed: Hypnotic Crimes, Corporate Fiction, and the Invention of Cinema. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Anolik, Ruth Bienstock and Douglas Howard, eds. (2004). The Gothic Other: Racial and Social Constructions in the Literary Imagination. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland.

Before the Footlights (1897). The Birmingham Pictorial and Dart. Issue 1077, 11 June 1897, Birmingham, 13. 19th Century UK Periodicals. GALE.

Bodie, Walford (1905). The Bodie Book. London: Caxton Press.

Buchanan, Robert Williams and Henry Murray (1895). The Charlatan. London: Chatto & Windus.

Butler, Alison (2011). Victorian Occultism and the Making of Modern Magic. London: Palgrave Macmillan.

Castling, Harry (1893). “How I mesmerise ‘em”. Arranged by John S. Baker. London: Francis, Day & Hunter.

Coates, James (1897). Human magnetism: or how to hypnotise: a practical handbook for students of mesmerism. London: George Redway. Bodleian Library, Radcliffe Science Library, University of Oxford, 16695.e.33 (Box B000000205813).

Collins, Wilkie (1999). The Moonstone. ed. Steve Farmer, Peterborough, Ontario: Broadview Press.

Davison, Carol Margaret (2004). Anti-Semitism and British Gothic Literature. London: Palgrave Macmillan UK.

Denisoff, Dennis (2015). Performing the Spirit: Theatre, the Occult, and the Ceremony of Isis. Cahiers victoriens et édouardiens, 80: 2-12.

The Drama in America (1895a). The Era. Issue 2950, 6 Apr 1895, London. British Library Newspapers, Part I: 1800-1900. GALE.

The Drama in America (1895b). The Era. Issue 2952, 20 Apr 1895, London. British Library Newspapers, Part I: 1800-1900. GALE.

Du Maurier, George (1996). Trilby and Other Plays. Adapted for stage by Paul Potter and Herbert Beerbohm Tree. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Elliotson, John (1848). Numerous Cases of Surgical Operations Without Pain in The Mesmeric State; with Remarks Upon the Opposition of Many Members of the Royal Medical and Chirurgical Society and Others to the Reception of The Inestimable Blessings of Mesmerism. London: Walton and Mitchell.

Fahlgren, Margarethe (2009). Strindberg and the Woman Question. In Robinson, Michael ed., 20-34.

Franklin, J. Jeffrey (2012). The Evolution of Occult Spirituality in Victorian England and the Representative Case of Edward Bulwer-Lytton. In Wilburn, Sarah A. and Tatiana Kontou, eds., 123-41.

Hart, Jerome Alfred (1913). Sardou and the Sardou Plays. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott. Haymarket Theatre (1895a). The Standard. Issue 22101, 3 May 1895, London. British Library Newspapers, Part II: 1800-1900. GALE.

Haymarket Theatre (1895b). The Standard. Issue 22169, 22 Jul 1895, London, 3. British Library Newspapers, Part II: 1800-1900. GALE.

Horner, Avril and Sue Zlosnik (2005). Gothic and the Comic Turn. London: Palgrave Macmillan.

Kontou, Tatiana (2013). Women and the Victorian Occult. London: Routledge.

Langley, John Newport (1884). The Physiological Aspect of Mesmerism. London: William Clowes and Son.

Lehman, Amy (2009). Victorian Women and the Theatre of Trance: Mediums, Spiritualists and Mesmerists in Performance. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland.

Lingan, Edmund B. (2006). Contemporary Forms of Occult Theatre. PAJ: A Journal of Performance and Art 28, 3: 23-38.

Lingan, Edmund B. (2014). The Theatre of the Occult Revival: Alternative Spiritual Performance from 1875 to the Present. New York: Palgrave.

Lutz, Meyer (music), George R. Sims and Henry Pettitt (lyrics) (1891). How to mesmerise ‘em. London: E. Ascherberg & Co.

The Man About Town (1897). The County Gentleman: Sporting Gazette, Agricultural Journal, and “The Man About Town.” Issue 1810, 16 Jan 1897, London, 70. 19th Century UK Periodicals. GALE.

Mr Beerbohm Tree in ‘Trilby’ (1895). Glasgow Herald. Issue 216, 9 Sept 1895, Glasgow. British Library Newspapers, Part I: 1800-1900. GALE.

Multiple Classified Advertisements (1896). The Sporting Times. ed. John Corlett, Issue 1727, 24 Oct 1896, London, 4. 19th Century UK Periodicals. GALE.

Opéra Comique (1895). The Standard. Issue 22271, 18 Nov 1895, London. British Library Newspapers, Part II: 1800-1900. GALE.

Opéra Comique-‘The Model Trilby’ (1895). The Sporting Times. Issue 1684, 28 Dec 1895, London, 3. 19th Century UK Periodicals. GALE.

Our London Correspondence (1893). Glasgow Herald. Issue 203, 25 Aug 1893, Glasgow. British Library Newspapers, Part I: 1800-1900. GALE.

Noakes, Richard (2012). The Sciences of Spiritualism in Victorian Britain: Possibilities and Problems. In Wilburn, Sarah A. and Tatiana Kontou, eds., 25-54.

Owen, Alex (2004). The Darkened Room: Women, Power, and Spiritualism in Late Victorian England. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Owen, Alex (2007). The Place of Enchantment: British Occultism and the Culture of the Modern. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Pick, Daniel (2000). Svengali’s Web: The Alien Enchanter in Modern Culture. Newhaven, Connecticut: Yale University Press.

Poster advertising the mesmerist Miss Annie De Montford at the Music Hall, Barnstaple, Devon (1881). British Library, Shelfmark: Evan. 1781.

Robinson, Michael ed. (2009), The Cambridge Companion to August Strindberg. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Smith, Matthew Wilson (2017). The Prison House of Nerves: Zola and Strindberg. The Nervous Stage: Nineteenth-century Neuroscience and the Birth of Modern Theatre. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Strindberg, Johan August (1998). Miss Julie and Other Plays. trans. Michael Robinson, Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Strindberg, Johan August (2005). Plays: The Father; Countess Julie; the Outlaw; The Stronger. c Edith and Warner Oland, Project Gutenberg, July 2005 [EBook #8499].

Sinnet, Alfred Percy (1892). The rationale of mesmerism. London: K. Paul, Trench, Trübner.

Teste, Joseph-Alphonse (1843). A Practical Manual of Animal Magnetism; Containing an Exposition of the Methods Employed in Producing the Magnetic Phenomena; with its Application to the Treatment and Cure of Diseases. trans. D. Spillan, London: Hyppolite Baillière.

The Theatres (1895). Daily News. Issue 15349, 10 Jun 1895, London. British Library Newspapers, Part I: 1800-1900. GALE.

Theatrical Gossip (1893). The Era. Issue 2868, 9 Sept 1893, London. British Library Newspapers, Part I: 1800-1900. GALE.

Theatrical Gossip (1895a). The Era. Issue 2943, 16 Feb 1895, London. British Library Newspapers, Part I: 1800-1900. GALE.

Theatrical Gossip (1895b). The Era. Issue 2957, 25 May 1895, London. British Library Newspapers, Part I: 1800-1900. GALE.

Things Theatrical by Bill of the Play (1895). The Sporting Times. Issue 1676, 2 Nov 1895, London, 3. 19th Century UK Periodicals. GALE.

Things Theatrical by Bill of the Play (1896). The Sporting Times. ed. John Corlett, Issue 1728, 31 Oct 1896, London, 3. 19th Century UK Periodicals. GALE.

This Week On Our Stage (1897). The Sun. 21 Nov 1897, New York City, 3. Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers. Library of Congress.

Thomas, W. Moy (1895). ‘Trilby’ in Town. The Graphic. Issue 1353, 2 Nov 1895, London. British Library Newspapers, Part I: 1800-1900. GALE.

Through the Opera Glass (1896). Pick-Me-Up. Issue 428, 12 Dec 1896, London, 166. 19th Century UK Periodicals. GALE.

Townshend, Chauncy Hare (1841). Facts in Mesmerism, or Animal Magnetism. Boston: Charles C. Little and James Brown.

Trilby (1895). The Era. Issue 2973, 14 Sept 1895, London. British Library Newspapers, Part I: 1800-1900. GALE.

‘Trilby’ at the Haymarket (1895). The Era. Issue 2980, 2 Nov 1895, London. British Library Newspapers, Part I: 1800-1900. GALE.

Wallace, Alfred (1866). The Scientific Aspect of the Supernatural. London: F. Farrah.

Wilburn, Sarah A. and Tatiana Kontou, eds. (2012). The Ashgate Research Companion to Spiritualism and the Occult. Farnham, Surrey: Ashgate.

Willis, Martin and Catherine Wynne, eds. (2006). Victorian Literary Mesmerism. Amsterdam: Rodopi.

Article download

Crossmark

Metrics

Published

2020-11-24

How to Cite

García Walsh K. (2020). Mesmerism in Late Victorian Theatre. Complutense Journal of English Studies, 28, 23-33. https://doi.org/10.5209/cjes.71586

ACM
ACS
APA
ABNT
Chicago
Harvard
IEEE
MLA
Turabian
Vancouver

Download Citation

Endnote/Zotero/Mendeley (RIS)
BibTeX

Issue

Vol. 28 (2020)

Section

Articles

License

In order to support the global exchange of knowledge, the journal Complutense Journal of English Studies is allowing unrestricted access to its content as from its publication in this electronic edition, and as such it is an open-access journal. The originals published in this journal are the property of the Complutense University of Madrid and any reproduction thereof in full or in part must cite the source. All content is distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 use and distribution licence (CC BY 4.0). This circumstance must be expressly stated in these terms where necessary. You can view the summary and the complete legal text of the licence.

Mesmerism in Late Victorian Theatre

Abstract

Downloads

Article download

Crossmark

Metrics

License

Information

logos

Web Feed Plugin

RedesSociales

Make a Submission