![]() Over the course of the development of the Gothic, theories concerning the causes and nature of madness changed. ![]() Gothic explorations of mental illness are consistent with the slippery nature of Gothic meaning, in that some affected characters are viewed with sympathy, while others, such as the mad scientists, are viewed as a special type of villain. The hero of the Gothic tale is often so burdened with the distance of his heroine that he falls into dissipation or depression. Gothic narratives also contain their fair share of lesser types of mental distress, such as depression and dissipation, although they are not termed as such. Hogg adds to the list, however, by also linking madness to the development of the mind and the influence of proper (or improper) upbringing. It is, however, clear that like Melmoth, Justified Sinner correlates evil, crime, and madness. Hogg's narrative is startling for the Gothic reader because rather than becoming more and more clear, Justified Sinner becomes less truth is so obscured that by the end neither the narrator nor the reader is able to discern fact from delusion. In 1824, James Hogg addresses similar concerns in his Gothic crime story Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner. Melmoth also closely links madness and criminality, telling the sane man Stanton that "Experience must teach you that there can be no crime into which madmen would not, and do not, precipitate themselves mischief is their occupation, malice their habit, murder their sport, and blasphemy their delight." One example of this is in Charles Maturin's Melmoth the Wanderer, in which the wanderer himself describes the sensation of insanity in fine detail, saying "You will echo the scream of every delirious wretch that harbours near you then you will pause, clasp your hands on your throbbing head, and listen with horrible anxiety whether the scream proceeded from you or them." Although it was written long before the term was coined, this seems to be a brilliant depiction of a dissociative state. In the Gothic, characters are subject to an onslaught of sensational and macabre events, and Gothic writers seem to delight in their descriptions of the mind's breaking point. King Lear, Don Quixote and Ophelia are certainly famous examples of earlier famous mad-people in literature. Madness (insanity) is a central theme in Gothic literature, although certainly this is not a Gothic invention.
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