The Female Malady: Women, Madness and English Culture, 1830-1980

Product Information

I read this book from cover to cover and would have been very happy if it were a school text. One of the things I liked most about the book was its personal approach, using the perspectives of female "inmates" themselves, and fiction excerpts from a variety of authors, such as Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Sylvia Plath, Charlotte Bronte, Doris Lessing, and others to highlight women's mental health issues and experiences with doctors and provide an insight into the culture and period. Mark S. Micale, ‘Charcot and the Idea of Hysteria in the Male: Gender, Mental Science, and Mental Diagnosis in Late Nineteenth-Century France’, Medical History, 34 (1990), 363-411. e-journal

The female malady by Elaine Showalter | Open Library The female malady by Elaine Showalter | Open Library

Nancy M. Theriot, ‘Women’s Voices in Nineteenth-Century Medical Discourse: A Step toward Deconstructing Science’, Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, 19 (1993), 1-31. e-journal Yet when women are spoken for but do not speak for themselves, such dramas of liberation become only the opening scenes of the next drama of confinement. Until women break free for themselves, the chains that make madness a female malady, like Blake's "mind forged manacles," will simply forge themselves anew.” Religious obsession, physical illness, tragic events, or love affairs were all stated causes of madness for women in this period. From 1858, some women were even incarcerated for asking for a divorce! And for pauper women, without home or money, there was often no escape from the asylum. Many women remained there until death. Arguments continue over statistics as to whether there were truly more women in Victorian asylums than men. However, in March 1879, Middlesex’s County Asylum at Hanwell housed a mere 728 males, in contrast to 1098 females (LMA ref. MJ/SP/1879/01/059). Roy Porter, Mind-Forg’d Manacles: A History of Madness in England from the Restoration to the Regency (London: Athlone, 1987; Penguin edn, 1990).This was an exceptionally compelling overview of "all that ails us" ... the us being women. It appears that the only thing that ails us is men, according to Showalter. I'm not sure whether I disagree, although I'll throw in just a pinch of irony. Mental health is quite a misnomer, in any case, for the most part of this book, for women were considered "mad" for the most innocuous of "offences". Suffice it to say that I wanted to set my own hair on fire while reading the travesties that women committed against society: the travesty of wanting dignity to raise their children out of poverty; the travesty of earning a decent wage for a profession of choice, and not relegated to the kitchen or the scrubhouse; the travesty of wanting a voice in how their bodies were treated; the travesty of wanting a say in society. All these were crimes for which at one time or other women were imprisoned in asylums for merely speaking their minds. Oh, and you'd definitely not want to speak your mind. That in itself is the worst travesty. It was an interesting and informative read. I just felt like I, personally was getting lost in all of the details. Access-restricted-item true Addeddate 2022-11-16 16:01:39 Autocrop_version 0.0.14_books-20220331-0.2 Bookplateleaf 0004 Boxid IA40763007 Camera USB PTP Class Camera Collection_set printdisabled External-identifier

The Female Malady: Women, Madness, and English - Frauenkultur The Female Malady: Women, Madness, and English - Frauenkultur

Ocr_converted abbyy-to-hocr 1.1.20 Ocr_module_version 0.0.17 Openlibrary OL2374091M Openlibrary_edition Jonathan Andrews and Anne Digby (eds), Sex and Seclusion, Class and Custody: Perspectives on Gender and Class in the History of British and Irish Psychiatry (Amsterdam and New York: Rodopi, 2004). (An excellent collection of essays; several of the essays challenge Showalter’s findings and emphasis on ‘gender’, see e.g. the articles of Wright, Levine-Clark and Michael but don’t ignore the rest.) e-book and several copies in library Access-restricted-item true Addeddate 2013-06-14 14:31:24 Bookplateleaf 0004 Boxid IA1127915 Camera Canon EOS 5D Mark II City New York, N.Y., U.S.A. Donor Lisa Appignanesi, Mad, Bad and Sad: A History of Women the Mind Doctors from 1800 to the Present( London: Virago, 2008). Several copies in libraryurn:oclc:record:1357633858 Foldoutcount 0 Identifier femalemaladywome0000show Identifier-ark ark:/13960/s2x398vp0vw Invoice 1652 Isbn 0860688690 Ocr tesseract 5.2.0-1-gc42a Ocr_detected_lang en Ocr_detected_lang_conf 1.0000 Ocr_detected_script Latin Ocr_detected_script_conf 0.9510 Ocr_module_version 0.0.18 Ocr_parameters -l eng Old_pallet IA-WL-1300185 Openlibrary_edition Showalter later taught at Rutgers and Princeton University (neither of which hired women when she began her teaching career) Showalter’s next book The Female Malady: Women, Madness, and English Culture was a historical examination of women and the practice of psychiatry

The Female Malady: Women, Madness and English Culture

Throughout history, terms of madness such as ‘lunatic’, ‘idiot’, and ‘feeble-minded’ have appeared on the records of both men and women. Yet some historians argue that women were especially vulnerable to incarceration — particularly when placed in the asylum by husbands or fathers. Causes of madness often differed between men and women. Their experiences of the asylum also contrasted. Showalter's writing is so engaging and her ideas are really compelling. Before reading, I thought I had the topic figured out - it seems quite evident if you've read anything about mental illness and feminism. But I was gladly mistaken - her arguments are very nuanced and focused and made me think about facets of the topic I hadn't previously. In addition, a historical scope like this can often make texts feel rushed, spending not enough time on each time period. This text never really felt like that. For my interests, I would have loved more time spent on the more recent years, but that would have made it unbalanced in treatment. Most recent work on the history of psychiatry has tended to focus on the history of institutions, of ideas, and of the psychiatric profession itself, and to ignore those for whom this vast infrastructure has (at least ostensibly) been erected. It is a historiography, as David Ingleby wittily put it, ‘like the histories of colonial wars’: it tells ‘us more about the relations between the imperial powers than about the “third world” of the mental patients themselves’. For this reason, among many others, Elaine Showalter’s The Female Malady is to be welcomed, for its primary focus is upon this neglected group – for the most part, on female patients.Mark S. Micale (ed.) , The Mind of Modernism: Medicine, Psychology, and the Cultural Arts in Europe and America, 1880-1940 (Stanford University Press, 2004), esp chs 1-2. Elaine Showalter, ‘Victorian Women and Insanity’, Victorian Studies, 23 (1979-80), 157-81, duplicated in Madhouses, Mad-Doctors, and Madmen, pp. 313-36. Victorian Studies is an e-journal