ABSTRACT
This chapter offers an overview of the evolution of the notion of melancholia and its eventual closeness to our contemporary diagnosis of clinical depression. It concludes on a discussion of excesses in the works of Collins and Braddon, arguing that in their sensational tales, both authors seek to warn readers against excessive idleness or industriousness and excessive seclusion at home or exclusion from it. Bell remarks that while the authors may simply answer that melancholia was replaced in psychiatry by the diagnosis of clinical depression, the reality is more complex. However, it is in No Name rather than The Woman in White that Collins most fully engages with depression, as the main character Magdalen Vanstone is repeatedly described as depressed. Braddon does not use the diagnosis of depression in either of the novels examined here, yet she marks a distinction between mental states of despondency and actual disorders of insanity.
