Gendering Pseudo‐Science: Inchbald's Animal Magnetism

Abstract

Elizabeth Inchbald's Animal Magnetism, adapted from Le Médecin Malgré tout le monde by AntoineJean-Bourlin Dumaniant, engages with a highly controversial issue of the late eighteenth century, the claims made by Anton Mesmer, among others, for the science of "animal magnetism." A commission appointed by the King of France determined that the effects claimed to be produced by animal magnetism were merely theatrical and imaginative, qualities that were feminized in an attempt to denigrate animal magnetism as pseudo-science. Inchbald's play follows this attack by satirizing animal magnetism through the absurd character of an old doctor who wishes to learn this pseudo-science in order to manipulate the affections of his young ward. Inchbald's satire, however, encompasses not only the fraudulent pseudoscience but also the official patriarchal power that the doctor also represents. Inchbald thus demonstrates the proximity between official structures of power and the supposedly fraudulent pseudo-science, and meta-theatrically stages the performance of animal magnetism in a way that exposes the impostures of both. Ultimately, the play valorizes the f luidity of performance demonstrated by the younger characters, and holds up for ridicule the doctor's untheatrical belief in his own "natural" power. The play thereby suggests that what is most dangerous about animal magnetism is in fact its reproduction of and not its divergence from, "legitimate" discourses of power.In 1784, a Royal Commission headed by Benjamin Franklin was appointed by King Louis XVI of France to investigate the claims made for the new science of animal magnetism being practiced by Franz Anton Mesmer and his protégé, Charles d' Eslon, in Paris. 1 Mesmer claimed to be able to cure all manner of diseases with the aid of magnets, or even his own hands, which could manipulate an invisible f luid that was supposed to f low through the entire universe; his patients were arranged around a metal tub, which was intended to focus the magnetic energy and to produce "crises," violent physical and emotional reactions to the treatment that would ultimately facilitate a cure. After conducting a number of experiments to test Mesmer's claims, the commission's report concluded that of all the potential causes of the effects attributed to magnetism, the imagination "suffices alone to produce the crises" (40). Using a telling metaphor, the report likens the public magnetic cure to a "theatrical representation" wherein patients are led to perform crises by crying out and having seizures precisely because they have a large and captive audience of fellow patients. In such a context, "the external manifestation of a single sensation immediately becomes universal," and leads others perform the same theatrics (38). Moreover, the commissioners observed the showmanship of the magnetists, who "seem to bestow a greater attention to excite surprise in the spectators than salutary effects in their patients" (6-7). According to the logic of these reports, the theatrical is equated with t...