In Vicotrian era Britain, people were coming to recognize the importance of science and psychology. Though England at the time was filled with deep thinkers, writers, and philosophers, only a few pioneers began to dedcate themselves to the study and observation of the sciences.George Henry Lewes was one such man who began as a philosopher who developed theorys regarding people's health, specifically, thier mental health. Throughout the early part of the Nineteenth-Century, Lewesbegan tests and studies using live animals to experiment nervous systems and refelxes. As he became busy with biological work, he kept refering back to his background in philosophy. 

In the 1840s, Lewes began to publish a series of books titled Problems of Life and Mind. In his books, he became one of the first scientists to make a connection that broke ground for future psychology. His theory was called Scientific Psychology: an idea which is founded on the combination between the objective study of mind practiced in biology and the subjective study of consciousness practiced in philosophy. in other words, his theory involved what is modernly refered to as nature vs. nurture.

In Victorian era literature, many themes of mania, craziness, and general madness appear, including Lady Audley from Lady Audley's Secret (1862) and Bertha Mason from Jane Eyre (1847). In these cases, we were cited evidence that thier madness was hereditary; thier mothers or other reletives had similar mental illnesses. To consider the interest in and new discoveries of psychology, it is not out of place for so many references to be present in literature from this time period. If we were to consider Lewes's writings along side these novels, perhaps we also would have considered the philisophical upbringing of these "mad" characters.

Works Cited

Thompson, Scott C. “On G. H. Lewes’s Problems of Life and Mind, 1874—79.” BRANCH: Britain, Representation and Nineteenth-Century History. Ed. Dino Franco Felluga. Extension of Romanticism and Victorianism on the Net. http://www.branchcollective.org/?ps_articles=scott-c-thompson-on-g-h-lew.... accessed on 12.1.2018