Introduction

Summary

In Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1897), madhouse superintendent Dr. John Seward lauds the work of two prominent physiologists who advanced the study of neuroscience by experimenting on live animals:

Men sneered at vivisection, and yet look at its results today! Why not advance science in its most difficult and vital aspect – the knowledge of the brain? Had I even the secret of one such mind – did I hold the key to the fancy of even one lunatic – I might advance my own branch of science to a pitch compared with which Burdon-Sanderson’s physiology or Ferrier’s brain-knowledge would be as nothing.

Critics have tended to overlook this passage, and perhaps understandably so – on the surface, neurological experiments seemingly have little to do with vampires, crucifixes, and the other supernatural mysteries at the heart of Stoker’s novel. But in fact, a series of neurological experiments that began in the 1860s and 1870s – conducted by Sir David Ferrier, among others – had a profound impact on late-Victorian Gothic novels and romances such as Dracula. In turn, these novels often influenced the direction of future neurological research. This seemingly unlikely, symbiotic relationship between fin-de-siècle neurology and certain kinds of popular fiction extends to matters of form as well as content. In this study, I show how late-Victorian neurologists and authors of Gothic romances shared a fascination for boundaries and their transgression, especially the evanescent mind–body divide and the limits of human free will. These shared philosophical concerns help to explain the surprising number of brains, brain cells, and neurological references in late-Victorian Gothic novels and romances. At the same time, novelists did not simply accept a neurological perspective. Instead, through their snarled plotlines and depictions of tormented subjectivity, Gothic romances often criticized the objective, linear viewpoint of late-Victorian neurological science, not to mention its sometimes rigid biological determinism.