Medical Context and Gender Issues in Eighteenth-Century British Novels, Focusing Jane Austen

情感的概念是十八世纪中叶和十九世纪初英国小说的一个流行主题。我证明，感性的普及在很大程度上是由于神经学的发展和医学知识在受过良好教育的普通公众中的传播。当感性的概念被接受时，女性的身体虚弱和缺乏决策能力是女性敏感和细腻的标志。女性敢于假装生病，以适应被认为是模范女性的人。因此，歇斯底里、神经性厌食症和其他疾病被认为是娇弱女性特有的症状。这些都是根据从十八世纪中期到十九世纪初出版的医学文献进行验证的。

The concept of sensibility was a popular theme of mid-eighteenth-century and early-nineteenth-century British novels. I demonstrated that the popularization of sensibility was largely due to the development of neurology and the spread of medical knowledge among well-educated lay public. As the concept of sensibility was accepted, women's physical frailty and lack of decision-making ability were the signs of womanly sensibility and delicacy. Women dared to feign to be ill to accommodate to what was deemed model women. As a result, hysteria, anorexia nervosa, and other ailments were regarded as symptoms peculiar to delicate women. These are verified based upon medical texts published from the mid-eighteenth to early-nineteenth centuries.