Abstract

Perrault's Bluebeard tale is a story of domestic abuse: Bluebeard tries to control his wife's movements by prohibiting her from entering a specific room in their chateau and attempts to kill his wife as punishment when she ultimately disobeys him. Bluebeard's violence towards his wife clearly marks him as an abuser. There have been countless other versions of the Bluebeard tale including Elizabeth Gaskell's short story "The Grey Woman." Unlike other versions of the tale that emphasize Bluebeard's physically abusive behavior, Gaskell's version focuses on a more subtle form of abuse: emotional abuse. Emotional abuse has remained an obscure topic within Victorian scholarship, and my paper attempts to address this gap in the literature by exploring the emotionally abusive marriage between Anna Scherer and, her personal Bluebeard, M. de la Tourelle. The term "emotional abuse did not exist during Gaskell's time, and yet, she skillfully portrays an emotionally abusive relationship. M. de la Tourelle isolates Anna from her family, controls her movements within her own home, and unexpectedly rages at her. Anna records the events of her abusive marriage in a letter to her daughter years after the events originally take place. As Anna writes her narrative, she attempts to articulate the abuse she endured. Without access to our 21st-century lexicon of abuse, Anna instead settles on physiognomy as a language that allows her to make sense of her husband's behavior. Physiognomy was a popular pseudoscience at the time, and it teaches that physical characteristics are indicative of personality traits. So, in her writing, Anna analyzes the curve of her husband's mouth, the light in his eyes, and the color of his cheeks all in an attempt to explain the emotional abuse she endured throughout her marriage. Anna also subjects herself to a physiognomic reading as she depicts how drastically her coloring has changed during her brief marriage to M. de la Tourelle. When Anna first married M. de la Tourelle, she had bright, lily-like skin and blonde hair. However, after enduring abuse in her marriage, her hair and skin both turn unnaturally and permanently gray. Anna depicts herself as being forever changed because of her abusive marriage. Gaskell's short story uses physiognomy as a tool to discuss emotional abuse long before the term "emotional abuse" existed. Studying the role physiognomy plays in "The Grey Woman," allows for new insights on how emotional abuse operates within the text. Ultimately, physiognomy provides a way of understanding how Victorian authors may have depicted both abusers and victims.

Degree

College and Department

Humanities; English

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