Ferment, Frenzy, Boundaries, and Barriers: Rabies in Shirley (1849)

The eponymous heroine of Charlotte Brontë’s Shirley (1849) briefly worries that she has contracted the rabies virus after she is bitten by a dog. This chapter argues that the rabies episode in this novel represents a short but violent microcosm of the text’s broader interest in the ways in which incipient threats of various kinds might be controlled, mollified out of existence, quelled or quashed. In the pages which describe Shirley’s bite, self-cauterization, and recovery, boundaries of all kinds—cutaneous, emotional, and sexual—are challenged and ultimately fortified. Shirley is, this chapter argues, persistently engaged in exploring the ways in which dangerous influences may or should be repressed, and the ways in which dangers ferment. By focusing in detail on the rabies virus as it was understood in the 1840s, the chapter shows how associated concepts of fermentation and rebellion resonate throughout the novel. It concludes by pointing to the limitations of, and contradictions in, the text’s surface alignment between rabid dogs and insurrectionists.