Artigo Acesso aberto Revisado por pares

The Madness of Writing: Lady Caroline Lamb's Byronic Identity

1999; Penn State University Press; Volume: 34; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.2307/1316621

ISSN

2326-067X

Autores

Paul Douglass,

Tópico(s)

Joseph Conrad and Literature

Resumo

Lady Caroline Lamb's madness is a stereotype of the romantic period: she was the woman Byron drove insane. Her literary output has been seen simply as the product of a diseased sexuality, as Malcolm Kelsall has aptly put it (4). Perhaps so, but the disease in her writing is different from what criticism has led us to believe. Lady Caroline almost certainly suffered from bipolar disorder (manic depression), which is often associated with creativity. Her volatility, self-recriminations and temper tantrums clearly predated her affair with Byron. Her behavior as a child, often exaggerated as completely wild and uncontrollable, nonetheless showed cyclothymic tendencies-a pattern of emotional peaks and troughs dramatic enough to attract the attention of her peers and elders. Her moods seem to have been sustained over periods as short as minutes and, at other times, over months, or even years. These changing moods captivated her companions throughout her life. Even at the end, when Lady Caroline was struggling with drug and alcohol addiction, Lady Morgan observed, One of her great charms was the rapid transition of manner which changed to its theme (Morgan 2: 255).

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