The 'green-eyed monster': jealousy and erotic monomania in He ...

that ‘At last the maniac was dead.’ 26
Trollope’s letters reveal that during the writing of He Knew He Was Right he was in communication
with psychologists, collecting material for his fictional case study. Furthermore, there is evidence that
this channel of influence was reciprocal in nature, with doctors reading the novel as pseudo-authentic
account of monomania. Trollope wrote to one physician, ‘I am gratified by the attention which your
scientific analysis shews that you have given to the character of the unfortunate man which I attempted
to draw in my novel,’ 27 demonstrating a two-way traffic of ideas between literary and scientific
disciplines.
This influence is particularly interesting since it demonstrates that novels were being read as realities in
themselves, rather than a mere reflection of them. Elizabeth Langland has argued that novelists and
novels ‘do not simply reflect the contemporary ideology. Rather, by depicting a material reality filled
with and interpreted through ideology, they also expose ideology.’ 28 I suggest that Langland’s argument
may be applied to psychology, as part of a wider argument about Victorian interdisciplinarity or
perhaps more specifically, predisciplinarity. Trollope’s correspondence with doctors, together with his
clear knowledge of contemporary psychological theory, enabled him to expose a character study in a
novel as a scientific case study.
Trollope’s writing follows psychiatrists who insisted that monomania stemmed primarily from
personal matters rather than heredity, such as Forbes Winslow and J. G. Davey. The heightened
suspicion and physical decline we observe in Trevelyan was central to the new conception of
monomania as observed by Davey in 1855, when he wrote, ‘the vacillating countenance indicates the
condition of the dismal mind; the eyes sunk in their hollow sockets… the looks restless and vacant.’ 29
Galsworthy’s The Man of Property (published in 1906), set from 1886-7, centres on Soames
Forsyte, a wealthy solicitor and art collector, and his marriage to the beautiful Irene Heron. To the