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

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Portrait of Mad Margery, a young woman driven mad and living in the fields, possibly taken from a popular song ‘Poor Mad Margery’ c.1790-1800. By James John Hill c.1830-70. Roy Porter, Mind-Forg’d Manacles: A History of Madness in England from the Restoration to the Regency (London: Athlone, 1987; Penguin edn, 1990). Developed women’s studies courses, edited and contributed articles to books and periodicals pertaining to women’s literature 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.

The Female Malady: Women, Madness and - OceanofPDF [PDF] The Female Malady: Women, Madness and - OceanofPDF

To have no food for our heads, no food for our hearts, no food for our activity, is that nothing? If we have no food for the body, how we do cry out, how all the world hears of it, how all the newspapers talk of it, with a paragraph headed in great capital letters, DEATH FROM STARVATION! But suppose one were to put a paragraph in the Times, Death of Thought from Starvation, or Death of Moral Activity from Starvation, how people would stare, how they would laugh and wonder! One would think we had no heads or hearts, by the indifference of the public towards them. Our bodies are the only things of consequence. 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 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 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.Louise Hide, Gender and Class in English Asylums, 1890-1914 (Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014). e-book

Hysteria in the MaleImages of Masculinity in Late-Nineteenth

urn:oclc:750558338 Republisher_date 20140925034845 Republisher_operator [email protected] Scandate 20140924080506 Scanner scribe5.shenzhen.archive.org Scanningcenter shenzhen Worldcat (source edition) 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.Excellent review of how little has changed in the past 150-200 years of the treatment of psychopathology in women. This is a historical piece about the experiences of women whose deviations from femininity are and have been pathologized and how cultural sexism causes psychopathological experiences, not a review/critique of the science of psychopathology, and it fulfills its purpose quite well. Female writing becomes more rebellious in nature and attempts to protest male authority along with the values and standards associated with a male-dominated mentality; fighting for freedom and autonomy; refers to post-Victorian age Roy Porter, Helen Nicholson and Bridget Bennett (eds), Women, Madness and Spiritualism, 3 vols (London and Showalter’s first book began as her doctoral thesis, turning into A Literature of Their Own: British Women Novelists from Bronte to Lessing

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

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 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 Roy Porter, A Social History of Madness: Stories of the Insane (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1987), ch. 6 ‘Mad Women’. Multiple copies in library 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.” 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)Bringing to light female writers that have been overshadowed by the dominance of western canon that predominately contains male writers 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 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. Lisa Appignanesi, Mad, Bad and Sad: A History of Women the Mind Doctors from 1800 to the Present( London: Virago, 2008). Several copies in library Elaine Showalter’s The Female Malady: Women, Madness, and English Culture, 1830-1980 is a very informative, very accessible, and very disturbing look at how “insanity” was treated from 1830 to 1980. It examines cultural expectations about how women should behave and how these male perceptions affected the diagnosis and treatment of women’s mental health problems.