Mental Health, Guilt, and Legal Perspectives in 19th-Century Literature

Focus of the current module
- How literature offers unique insight into mental-health conditions and their influence on human behaviour.
- How these psychological struggles intersect with questions of guilt and criminal liability.
- Students will not become lawyers, but will borrow basic legal reasoning to frame arguments.
End-product: an argumentative/research paper that
- Uses literary evidence plus real-world legal precedent.
- Presents EITHER a defence OR a prosecution theory for a chosen despicable character.
- Goes beyond “just about the literature” to integrate psychology, law, ethics and textual analysis.

Two suggested argumentative positions
1. Defence: search for mitigating factors—e.g., mental illness, intoxication, diminished capacity—that might reduce culpability.
2. Prosecution: construct a theory aimed at maximum punishment (e.g., life imprisonment), emphasising pre-meditation, malice, or dangerousness.
Students encouraged to locate and cite real case precedents (“documents that would provide precedent”) as proof.
Reminder: although the activity borrows legal vocabulary, the course remains a literature class—not pre-law or clinical psychology.

A key interpretive lens
- Many Gothic/Victorian texts employ unreliable narrators.
- "There are always two sides to every story, and somewhere in the middle is the truth."
- If the old man (victim) narrated “The Tell-Tale Heart,” the story’s tone and facts would differ drastically.
- Students must weigh narrator bias when building legal arguments.

Brief Poe biographical anecdote
- Disappeared in Paris for a week; re-appeared visibly intoxicated or drugged.
- Ultimately found in a gutter; died in the street—illustrates personal struggles with substance use.
Story essentials (as recalled in class)
- Narrator insists on sanity while describing murder of an old man.
- Fixation on the old man’s "vulture eye."
- Heightened paranoia: believes he can hear the victim’s heartbeat, even after death, leading to confession.
Analytical prompts
- Mental-health readings: paranoia, possible psychosis.
- Possible legal discussions: insanity defence vs. evidence of pre-meditation (watching victim every night).

Instructor read a large excerpt aloud (lines reproduced verbatim in class).
Plot snapshot
- A scorned woman hires an apothecary to compound poison.
- Imagines elaborate revenge on romantic rivals at “the king’s.”
- Fascinated by colour, texture, and “invisible pleasures” of lethal chemicals.
Thematic notes
- Intersection of jealousy, gendered power, and chemistry/technology.
- Pre-meditated murder by proxy—fertile ground for prosecution arguments.
- Ethical dimension: voyeuristic relish in violence.
Technical/lexical glosses
- “Devil’s smithy” = the chemist’s workshop.
- “Lozenge,” “pastille,” “filigree basket” = forms in which poison can be delivered.

Contextual reminders
- Mid-{1800s} propriety: a woman baring her shoulder is “pretty sexy.”
- Porphyria sometimes interpreted literally as a woman, but name also hints at medical condition (porphyria) causing madness.
Key plot beats
- Lover strangles Porphyria with her own hair to “freeze” a perfect moment.
- Post-mortem details: tongue protrusion (asphyxiation), blood drainage & cooling.
Discussion angles
- Role of suppressed female agency vs. male control.
- Legal defence: crime of passion vs. calculated murder.
- Moral irony: narrator believes God “has not said a word” about the deed.

Then vs. now
- Modern pharmacies (e.g., Walgreens) sell pre-packaged drugs.
- 19^{th}-century England used compounding pharmacies: apothecaries made remedies from scratch.
Literary relevance
- “The Laboratory” rests on this historical practice—the poison is customised on demand.
- Dr. Jekyll’s private mixtures (alluded to by instructor) follow the same model.

Strangulation indicators
- Inability to breathe causes tongue to protrude between teeth.
- After release, blood drains for “one last time,” then body cools (algor mortis).
Sensory hallucinations in Poe
- Auditory hallucination of heartbeat: potential symptom of psychosis or extreme guilt.

“Porphyria’s Lover” and “The Laboratory” both foreground female sexuality and agency within repressive Victorian norms.
Discussion of “masculine eyes,” “ensnared him,” and erotic undertones of revenge.
Analytical angle: how gender expectations shape motives and legal/ethical interpretation.

Students will:
- Access texts via shared digital document; instructor will screen-share while an audio reading plays.
- Engage in group discussions to answer 10 guided questions per text.
  • Do not rewrite each question—record only the answers.
  • Complete by end of session for weekly grade.
- Later, reopen the document to add analysis of a third story (title TBD).
Technical logistics
- Instructor transferring files via AirDrop to iPad, MacBook, or phones; troubleshooting visibility of devices.

Side dialogue about a student’s car accident, Tesla charging, DMV appointments, and idea of becoming a driving instructor.
Mention of friends line-dancing at “Roundup,” driving sober friends home.
Instructor briefly paused recording due to off-topic chatter.

Real-world relevance
- Examination of how mental illness is treated in criminal courts today (insanity defence, competency, diminished capacity).
- Ethical tension between understanding pathology and safeguarding society.
Literary-historical
- Gothic/Victorian fascination with madness, science, and morality mirrors contemporary anxieties.
Potential philosophical questions for essays
- Does artistic portrayal of violence humanise or sensationalise mental illness?
- Where does culpability lie when social norms and personal pathology collide?

Choose a character (from Poe or Browning texts, or upcoming third story).
Decide whether to defend or prosecute; gather textual evidence + real legal precedents.
Finish 10-question worksheet today; keep notes for eventual research paper.
Prepare to discuss reliability of narrators and 19th-century medical context in the next class.