Insanity

Insanity is presented as the anticipated consequence of a disease Godwin Baxter says he inherited from his father, a celebrated surgeon. The diagnosis hangs over his relationship with Victoria McCandless and helps redirect her hopes toward medicine. Yet Victoria later doubts that he was ever syphilitic, while his final physical decline appears to give his warning a grim weight without settling its cause. The state is therefore both a feared bodily future and an unresolved question in Victoria’s account.

Diagnosis and Prognosis

Godwin explains that his inherited syphilitic illness will eventually cause insanity and general paralysis. He cannot say when the deterioration will begin: it might arrive in a few months or take a few years. The uncertainty is central to the prognosis. He speaks not of a distant abstraction but of an approaching event whose timing cannot be known, and says he is prepared for it.

He believes no ordinary doctoring can help once the illness takes hold. His planned response is a painless poison, which he will carry and administer to himself when the first symptoms appear. The plan makes the prospect of mental and physical decline inseparable from a decision about how to meet it. In his account, the illness cannot be cured; preparation means choosing the conditions under which its consequences will be faced.

Victoria’s Response and Doubt

Godwin’s disclosure changes the direction of Victoria’s aspirations. She resolves to become a doctor, not in the hope of curing him, but to save other people if she cannot save him. Her promise to replace him and become him gives medicine an intensely personal meaning: it is both a vocation and a response to the possible loss of the person whose knowledge and care have shaped her. Godwin accepts the idea and agrees that her studies should be directed toward that purpose, while also urging her to find a husband who will support her ambitions.

Victoria’s resolve does not mean she accepts the diagnosis as true. After Godwin says that he may not be alive, she privately concludes that she no longer believes he has syphilis. She finds it easier to think he invented the illness to prevent women from manipulating him. This suspicion is Victoria’s interpretation, not a confirmed explanation of his disclosure. It leaves open whether the prognosis was an honest confession, a defensive invention, or something her later observations cannot neatly resolve.

Decline and Dependence

When Victoria returns to 18 Park Circus, Godwin is already dying. She recognizes the change in his shrunken figure and trembling hand. His illness has reached a stage at which he needs medical assistance with some functions that his mother, Mrs. Dinwiddie, is no longer strong enough to manage. The account thus moves from an uncertain future timetable to visible bodily change and practical dependence.

The approach of death also alters Godwin’s relations with Archibald McCandless. Although Godwin had disliked him, Victoria finds her fiancé at his mother’s side, and understands that proximity to death has displaced that hostility. Godwin fears that his mind will soon be entirely gone and asks McCandless for a very strong medicine. After Godwin’s head begins to shake and his mouth to dribble, McCandless gives him an injection; Godwin becomes sensible for a few more minutes. The brief return of clarity comes amid, rather than before, the bodily signs of his decline.

In those lucid minutes, Godwin addresses Victoria as Bella-Victoria and asks her to marry McCandless, whom he calls the candle-maker friend. He offers her everything he owns and asks her to look after his dogs, describing them as lonely and leaderless. These requests make the consequences of his condition concrete: he is trying to settle Victoria’s future and the care of his animals while he still has the ability to speak and be understood.

Narrative Significance

The account does not conclusively verify that syphilis caused Godwin’s final deterioration. Victoria’s earlier disbelief remains part of the record, while the later signs—shrinking, trembling, difficulty performing functions, and impaired speech and control—make the anticipated collapse present in the narrative. The distinction between what Godwin predicted and what Victoria believes about his diagnosis is left intact.

Insanity also marks a limit on Victoria’s power to repay the care she has received. She can pursue medicine and promise to save others, but she cannot promise to cure Godwin; his earlier plan for himself and her later presence at his bedside frame the illness as a boundary neither resolve nor affection can remove. His final requests turn that approaching loss outward, toward McCandless, Victoria, and the dogs whose future he still tries to provide for.