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Many poetical beliefs are vanishing with the passing generation. A shooting star is unlucky to see. I have so far a belief in this that I always have a chill in my heart when I see one, for I have often noticed them when watching over a sick-bed and very, very anxious. The dog-rose, that pretty libertine of the hedges [. . .] is unlucky. Never form any plan while sitting near one, for it will never answer. Elizabeth Gaskell to Mary Howitt (18 Aug. 1838) E lizabeth Gaskell's fascination with the oral traditions of pre-industrial England, which she gathered throughout her life and utilised in her fiction, was symptomatic of general middle-class interest in recording and preserving the customs of a disappearing past. The folk beliefs of oral tradition had a major influence on nineteenth-century literary endeavour, particularly on the historical novel and the ghost story. Gaskell herself was a notable exponent of the tale of terror and of the supernatural which she delighted to narrate to her friends and acquaintances, including Charlotte Brontë, who implored Gaskell to refrain from relating a particularly gloomy story one evening before they retired to bed. Brontë admitted that she was susceptible to superstitious fancies and dreaded the recurrence of particularly suggestive ideas (Uglow 244). Gaskell dwelt at length on this "morbid" sensitivity in The Life of Charlotte Brontë (1857) and offered a diagnostic assessment of the superstitious nature of her friend. The apparent ambiguity in Gaskell's attitude-her delight in circulating ghost stories and her concern about the sinister hold that superstition could have over the mind-reflects the ambiguity of her age. Despite the enormous appeal of the supernatural and the occult, the Victorian period was notable for its rationalist and scientific orientation towards human nature, behaviour, and belief. The cause and influence of the superstitious mind was of increasing interest to Victorian psychologists, and was also to feature in the fiction of the period. Indeed, Gaskell's interest in the morbid mind recurs throughout her work and indicates, I will argue, widespread concerns about the prevalence of irrational belief and the influence of what was known as the "psychological epidemic" and its power over the Victorian mind.Mental epidemics were widely discussed in the periodical press during the 1850s by influential scientific figures such as David Brewster, William Benjamin Carpenter, and Thomas Laycock, who voiced general anxieties about poor educational provision and mental health. As a Unitarian, a creed at the forefront of campaigns for social
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