WHEN MOURNING IS SPEAKABLE BUT MELANCHOLIA IS SILENCED: LANGUAGE, GENDERED GRIEF, AND MASCULINE CRISIS IN ELIZABETH GASKELL’S THE MANCHESTER MARRIAGE
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.31851/5gg7wj29Keywords:
mourning, melancholia, gender, MasculinityAbstract
This study examines the gendered articulation of grief in Elizabeth Gaskell’s The Manchester Marriage, arguing that mourning is rendered socially and linguistically speakable for Alice Wilson, while melancholia is silenced in the case of Frank Wilson. Drawing on Sigmund Freud’s “Mourning and Melancholia” (1917), the analysis demonstrates that Alice is able to process loss through a culturally sanctioned language of mourning, whereas Frank’s grief lacks legitimate discursive expression and consequently manifests as melancholia, marked by ego disintegration, self-reproach, and eventual suicide. By integrating Judith Butler’s theory of gender performativity and R. W. Connell’s concept of hegemonic masculinity, this study reveals how Victorian patriarchal norms regulate emotional expression through language. Alice’s sorrow is recognized, articulated, and resolved within acceptable feminine discourse, while Frank’s grief is pathologized, internalized, and constructed as deviant within dominant masculine frameworks. The study contends that melancholia in Gaskell’s narrative functions not as a private psychological failure but as a socio-discursive symptom of a rigid gender order that authorizes female mourning while denying men a legitimate language for emotional vulnerability.
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