Women’s Chronic “Oppressive Pain” in Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights, Charlotte Brontë’s Shirley, and Elizabeth Gaskell’s Mary Barton

With a modern understanding of chronic pain and its psychological ties at the forefront, this project seeks to unpack the social ramifications for women suffering from long-term pain in Victorian fiction. Focusing on novels by Emily Brontë, Charlotte Brontë, and Elizabeth Gaskell, this project asks: where do we see women in prolonged pain in mid-Victorian fiction? What social and psychological factors affect their experiences of pain? I argue that in these novels, “chronic” or prolonged pain serves as the locus for a complex of issues pertaining to gender, psychology, and caregiving. The women characters’ suffering in these works reflects the pervasive, destructive power of broader social ills in Victorian England.