ABSTRACT
This chapter uncovers how the popular nineteenth-century genre of sensation novels might help us better understand the mental sufferings of many Victorian men and women. This approach to the study of sensation novels therefore inscribes itself in the ideology of the health humanities, as it seeks to understand individual experiences of mental illness through a comprehensive exploration of the social, economic, and political environments of these individuals. Furthermore, like many other health humanities projects, this research uses a creative medium, in the fictional productions of Wilkie Collins and Mary Elizabeth Braddon, to underpin our understanding of nineteenth-century psychology. By focusing on hypochondria, identified as a nervous disorder in the nineteenth century, and its fictional representation in Collins's and Braddon's novels, the author investigates how they can make sense of specific demonstrations of nervousness in Victorian individuals.
