This article examines Elizabeth Gaskell’s use of the early psychiatric idea of monomania in her novel Mary Barton (1848). Digital searches show a steep rise in the textual use of the word so that by the mid-1830s it might be described as popularly familiar, albeit still invested with the esotericism and prestige of medical vocabulary. The furore in the press circulating around monomaniacal assassins would not have escaped Gaskell’s notice as she began the novel, which was written intermittently between the years 1844 and 1847 and set in c. 1834 to 1840. John Barton, and his sister-in-law, fallen woman Esther, are gripped by obsessive, avenging missions fostered by the pathogenic environments they inhabit. Their trajectories are similar: the loss of a child, a recourse to opiates and alcohol to manage misery and hunger, and an expulsion from the normalizing world of domesticity. The narrative describes both as monomaniacs. I argue that these monomanias are equivalent to a tormenting class consciousness wherein their over-abundant imaginations refuse to accept their lot. A challenge to the notion that the working class were morally at fault, monomania is presented as a condition caused by an environment that can only foster despair. The text does not simply pathologize the characters, but presents the social structure itself as pathological. Gaskell uses a gothic formulation of the disease as ‘haunting’ and ‘incessant’. It is a novelistic version which is both proto-sensational in the projects its sufferers pursue (murder and detection) whilst also signifying a nervous collapse brought about by material deprivation. Gaskell’s monomaniacs come closest to replicating the aetiologies of their ‘real’ counterparts in County Asylums.

中文翻译：

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“一种新的、凶猛的疾病正在肆虐”：玛丽·巴顿 (Mary Barton) 的偏执狂 (1848)

本文考察了伊丽莎白·加斯凯尔 (Elizabeth Gaskell) 在她的小说《玛丽·巴顿 (Mary Barton)》(1848 年) 中对偏执狂的早期精神病学观点的使用。数字搜索显示该词的文本使用急剧增加，因此到 1830 年代中期，它可能会被描述为大众熟悉的词，尽管仍然充满了医学词汇的神秘主义和声望。围绕着偏执的刺客传播的新闻界的愤怒不会逃过加斯凯尔的注意，因为她开始写这部小说，这部小说是在 1844 年到 1847 年间断断续续地写成的，背景设定在 c。1834 年到 1840 年。约翰巴顿和他的嫂子，堕落的女人埃丝特，被他们居住的病原环境所培养的强迫性复仇任务所困扰。他们的轨迹相似：失去一个孩子，依靠鸦片和酒精来应对痛苦和饥饿，并被驱逐出正常化的家庭世界。叙述将两者描述为偏执狂。我认为这些偏执狂相当于一种折磨人的阶级意识，其中他们过多的想象力拒绝接受他们的命运。对工人阶级在道德上有过错的观念提出了挑战，偏执被认为是一种只能助长绝望的环境引起的状况。文本并没有简单地将人物病态化，而是将社会结构本身呈现为病态的。加斯凯尔将这种疾病用哥特式表述为“令人难以忘怀”和“无休止”。这是一个小说版本，它在其受害者所追求的项目（谋杀和侦查）中既具有原始轰动性，同时也象征着物质匮乏带来的精神崩溃。