Gender identity and madness in the nineteenth-century novel

Contends that 19th-century British and American novelists employed the language of insanity to deal with the growing instability of traditional gender roles, because it was the only vocabulary that seemed adequate to reflect the conflict and turmoil manifest in the personal issues. Looks at links between madness and sexuality, madness and literature, and sexuality and discourse as expressed in such works as Hawthorne's The House of the Seven Gables, Wells' The Invisible Man, Haggard's She, and Stoker's Lair of the White Worm. Double spaced. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR