The Female Malady: Women, Madness and English Culture 1830-1980
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...
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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.
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Format: paperback
ISBN:
9780860688693 (0860688690)
Publish date: 1988
Publisher: Virago
Pages no: 308
Edition language: English
Category:
Non Fiction,
History,
Feminism,
Health,
Medical,
Psychology,
Womens,
Mental Health,
Mental Illness,
Womens Studies,
Gender And Sexuality
This was engaging and a very enjoyable read that certainly left me with food for thought. I read it in preparation for a class and I'm definitely going to be following up on this topic and likely writing my class essay on it. I also really enjoyed the writing style, Showalter's style is easy to foll...