The Female Malady

Women and hysteria in the Victorian era

Elaine Showalter’s book ‘The Female Malady’ is a seminal book for my research that I keep close by as I write and research further.  She writes about Women, Madness and English Culture, 1830-1980.  It shows how cultural ideas about how ‘correct’ feminine behaviour shaped the definition and treatment of female insanity over a 150 year period. 

Most significantly, and what interests me the most, is the differentiation in definitions, perception and treatment between men and women suffering from insanity.  During the Victorian period, the social spheres were distinct for men and women and therefore the perception of insanity, even if the symptoms were the same, was also different.  Men were in the public and intellectual world whereas women were seen as domesticated, inhabiting the realm of the home and hearth.  She was compliant and submissive to her husband. Women were seen as the weaker sex, both physically and mentally.  They were deemed to be too weak minded to cope with intellectual stimuli, for example they were not admitted to British Universities until 1868  and even then, were not awarded degrees despite passing universities examinations until 1878 (University of London) and Cambridge University didn’t award them until 1948! As a result of this ‘intellectual weakness’, women were perceived as more susceptible to insanity than men.

In addition, the class system in the Victorian period had a large role to play, the rich women could remain at home in domesticity, taking care of husband, children and home – usually with the help of servants.  The poor women would have had no choice but to work outside the home although the work would usually have still related to some domestic chores either in factories or as a domestic service in richer households.  Either way, most women were firmly enclosed in their ‘female place’.

Hysteria had a range of mental and physical symptoms such as fainting, dizziness, fits, vomiting, sobbing, uncontrollable laughing and paralysis all of which were seen as unstable and fitted firmly within the feminine nature.  Showalter draws on literary works of the time to present arguments to support that it is the very restrictive nature of the domestic sphere that caused some women to suffer from mental illness.  The term neurasthenia was first used in America and came to be used for the more lady-like and refined woman.  The symptoms were the same as hysteria.  The treatment for neurasthenia was the rest cure.  Women were advised to eat well, exercise, rest and limit intellectual stimulation.  The writer Charlotte Perkins Gilman was prescribed the rest cure after suffering from depression and she said the cure nearly drove her mad!  She wrote a short story “The Yellow Wallpaper” where a writer suffering from depression is given the rest cure where she is allowed to do nothing but rest, eat and exercise mostly in isolation. She is eventually driven mad believing a woman (herself) to be trapped behind the wallpaper in her room which she rips off in an attempt to free her alter ego.   

All this is in contrast to how insanity in men is defined.  Men were also diagnosed as hysterics, but these accounts seem to be ‘rare phenomenon’ according to Showalter.  During World War I there were an alarming number of cases of soldiers suffering from hysteria.  However, it was uncomfortable, to say the least, to have soldiers suffering from hysteria.  The whole concept of soldiering and war was one of masculinity.  It was insurmountable that soldiers could be suffering from what was regarded as a feminine malady. Dr Charles Myers, psychologist, termed the symptoms that he saw in soldiers as ‘shell shock’ as he believed they must have been caused by heavy artillery falling near the men.  Later, many men who had not been close to heavy shelling were seen with shell shock and it had become an epidemic that the military were unprepared for.  However, the term shell shock did provide a far more masculine sounding illness than hysteria.  The difference in class and diagnoses is evident in men in the army as it was in women.  Officers were diagnosed with neurasthenia rather than hysterics and treatment was different. 

The importance of words, of definitions, of terminology is paramount in unravelling and understanding madness in this period.  The social construct and culture shaped and formed the attitudes of the medical profession and of the treatment of men and women suffering mental disorders.