Female Malady [Paperback]

Elaine Showalter (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 7, 1987 | ISBN-10: 0860688690 | ISBN-13: 978-0860688693

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.

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

Showalter, well known for her feminist studies of literature, here turns her attention to the history of psychiatry. Approaches to treatment have ranged from kindly paternalism to repressive discipline to psychosurgery to drugs. They have this in common: The treatments are devised by men and inflicted, predominantly, on women. She finds one exception, and a fascinating parallel, in the shell-shocked soldiers of World War I. Men in war, experiencing powerlessness, responded with hysterialike women. The doctors' response was to treat them like women. Showalter presents a moving, troubling history and a strong, surely controversial, argument drawing on literature and art as well as on case histories. Only feminist psychiatric theory and practice, she concludes, offer hope for change. The book is eloquently written and accessible to general and scholarly readers. Highly recommended. Mary Drake McFeely, Smith Coll. Lib., Northampton, Mass.
Copyright 1986 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Review

She writes with penetration, precision and passion. This book is essential reading for all those concerned with what psychiatry has done to women, and what new psychiatry could do for them ROY PORTER, WELLCOME INSTITUTE FOR THE HISTORY OF MEDICINE

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Product Details

• Paperback: 320 pages
• Publisher: Virago (May 7, 1987)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0860688690
• ISBN-13: 978-0860688693
• Product Dimensions: 4.9 x 7.8 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.5 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #290,698 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Female Malady, January 10, 2010

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Luxx Mishley "Luxx" - See all my reviews

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This review is from: The Female Malady: Women, Madness, and English Culture, 1890-1980 (Mass Market Paperback)

Elaine Showlater's The Female Malady: Women, Madness and English Culture, 1830-1980 is a brilliant discussion of the perception and treatment of mental illness, focusing on the female perspective. Showalter's research is thorough, and her presentation of information shows a care and attentiveness to her material that increases the confidence of the reader. Drawing on a cultural sangria of material, The Female Malady traces the systematic (and often blundering) treatment of mental disease, focusing on how women influenced the establishment as not only patients, but commentators in the form of employees and writers, activists and advocates.

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.