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In this informative, timely and often harrowing study, Elaine Showalter demonstrates how cultural ideas about 'proper' feminine behaviour have shaped the definition and treatment of female insanity for 150 years, and given mental disorder in women specifically sexual connotations. Along with vivid portraits of the men who dominated psychiatry, and descriptions of the therapeutic practices that were used to bring women 'to their senses', she draws on diaries and narratives by inmates, and fiction from Mary Wollstonecraft to Doris Lessing, to supply a cultural perspective usually missing from studies of mental illness. Highly original and beautifully written, The Female Malady is a vital counter-interpretation of madness in women, showing how it is a consequence of, rather than a deviation from, the traditional female role.… (more)
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The majority of the text focuses on the plight of the Victorian woman, and how doctors and the medical profession responded to what they perceived as the nervous energy attached to the rising discontent of women as a gendered class. However, the text does not end there, and moves on to discuss everything from evolving practices in institutions, the feminization of mental disease, the presence and treatment of male patients, psychoanalysis, and the feminist therapy movement. Showalter skillfully blends historical observation and study with careful literary analysis to give her reader and understanding of the material from several angles and increase their awareness of the historical implications of insanity not just for the evolution of women, but for the sciences and literary fields alike. At just 250 pages, The Female Malady is by no means a complete history, but proves to be a useful volume on its own, especially for those considering cultural and literary implications of insanity beyond the straight-forward studies of psychology or psychoanalytic theory.