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

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Our images of madness, she argues, are disproportionately female: ‘women, within our dualistic systems of language and representation, are typically situated on the side of irrationality, silence, nature and body, while men are situated on the side of reason, discourse, culture and mind.’ Romantic portraits of Crazy Jane, a poor servant girl seduced and abandoned by her lover; Lucia di Lammermoor with its picture of female sexuality as insane violence against men; Bertha Mason and Gothic madness – violent and hideous animality kept caged in Mr Rochester’s attic lest a ‘clothed hyena’ be let loose upon the world: in novels, in drama, in poetry, in painting, in popular ballads, in opera, it is women who stand as emblems and exemplars of irrationality.

Women, Madness, and Literature - Brill

urn:oclc:750558338 Republisher_date 20140925034845 Republisher_operator [email protected] Scandate 20140924080506 Scanner scribe5.shenzhen.archive.org Scanningcenter shenzhen Worldcat (source edition) 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. Showalter’s first book began as her doctoral thesis, turning into A Literature of Their Own: British Women Novelists from Bronte to Lessing 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. Reclaiming Australia Day: The terrible history of the 26th of January and those seeking to abolish it, by Jenna HelmsGuenter B. Risse, ‘Hysteria at the Edinburgh Infirmary: The Construction and Treatment of a Disease, 1770- 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). urn: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

The Female Malady - Google Books

It was an interesting and informative read. I just felt like I, personally was getting lost in all of the details. 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. Bringing to light female writers that have been overshadowed by the dominance of western canon that predominately contains male writers Referred to by Showalter as the “new stage of self-awareness”; the most evolutionary phase of feminist criticism where women no longer imitate male writers’ styles, but also no longer only write to oppose authority; strive to celebrate the nature and essence of what constitute the female self (body, sexuality)Showalter later taught at Rutgers and Princeton University (neither of which hired women when she began her teaching career) David G. Schuster, ‘Personalizing Illness and Modernity: S. Weir Mitchell, Literary Women, and Neurasthenia, 1870-