Writing Women's Madness, 1845-1914

Taking an interdisciplinary approach, this book bridges literary studies and the history of medicine to offer a unique perspective on female mental illness in the nineteenth century.

Taking an interdisciplinary approach, this book bridges literary studies and the history of medicine to offer a unique perspective on female mental illness in the nineteenth century. Demonstrating the importance of writing to psychiatric practice during this period, the book moves forward from previous asylum-focused scholarship, to uncover how written discourse was integral to the creation and development of theories about the female mind. During the Victorian era, cultural beliefs about femininity combined with an emerging physiological understanding of mental illness to produce a concept of female madness centred on reproductive biology. Exploring the textuality of clinical literature and periodicals, the book shows how their genre, form, language, and readership shaped the development of gendered psychiatric theory. Covering nineteenth-century print culture, a range of popular and specialist periodicals, and delving into little explored sources in the history of psychiatry, the book examines key topics of interest such as the mind sciences in the popular press; the publishing history of psychiatric textbooks; patient literature in asylum periodicals; and the early treatment of mental illness at the turn of the twentieth century. The book will appeal to researchers working in the fields of periodical studies, women's history, and the history of psychiatry, as well as scholars interested in the medical humanities more broadly.