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.

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

Roy Porter, Helen Nicholson and Bridget Bennett (eds), Women, Madness and Spiritualism, 3 vols (London and 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). 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 Louise Hide, Gender and Class in English Asylums, 1890-1914 (Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014). e-bookLisa Appignanesi, Mad, Bad and Sad: A History of Women the Mind Doctors from 1800 to the Present( London: Virago, 2008). Several copies in library

The Female Malady by Elaine Showalter | Hachette UK The Female Malady by Elaine Showalter | Hachette UK

Spark asks whether men or women are in the driver's seat and whether the power to choose one's destroyer is women's only form of self-assertion.” urn:oclc:750558338 Republisher_date 20140925034845 Republisher_operator [email protected] Scandate 20140924080506 Scanner scribe5.shenzhen.archive.org Scanningcenter shenzhen Worldcat (source edition) urn:lcp:femalemalady00elai:epub:6ac50138-73e7-43aa-84e9-78e33298d69f Extramarc Columbia University Libraries Foldoutcount 0 Identifier femalemalady00elai Identifier-ark ark:/13960/t27970d6j Invoice 11 Isbn 0140101691 Lccn 87002222

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. Showalter coined the term gynocriticism; which refers to the literary framework that is going to assess the works of female authors and focuses on critiquing their work without using terminologies used and developed by male critics and authors, as using that sets the women writers at a disadvantage

Selection from “The Female Malady: Women, Madness, and Selection from “The Female Malady: Women, Madness, and

Alexander Morison, The Physiognomy of Mental Diseases (London: G. Odell, 1838), Plate VIII. The image was one of a series depicting puerperal insanity or insanity of childbirth; note the restraints and gloves, which may have been put on the patient to avoid self-harm or to prevent masturbation. 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. 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. Elaine Showalter is an American literary critic, feminist, and writer on cultural and social issues. She is one of the founders of feminist literary criticism in United States academia, developing the concept and practice of gynocritics.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. 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

THE FEMALE MALADY? MEN, WOMEN AND - JSTOR

She is well known and respected in both academic and popular cultural fields. She has written and edited numerous books and articles focussed on a variety of subjects, from feminist literary criticism to fashion, sometimes sparking widespread controversy, especially with her work on illnesses. Showalter has been a television critic for People magazine and a commentator on BBC radio and television. This is not a review by any means. Just some random thoughts. A review would require a thesis: and I'd be quoting more than half the book. Just read it. Showalter has such an engaging style, you'll be thinking you're reading just another gothic novel, but by the time you're through, you'll be scared to death. For real. 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. Hilary Marland, Dangerous Motherhood: Insanity and Childbirth in Victorian Britain (Houndmills: Palgrave-Macmillan, 2004). 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 libraryBringing to light female writers that have been overshadowed by the dominance of western canon that predominately contains male writers 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 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. 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.”