Female Insanity Research Articles

Women and Madness in Game of Thrones:

Historically, women do not appear to be escaping the determination to be insane either by adopting prescribed patterns of femininity or by opposing the attributions. No matter how strong or weak a woman is, in the end, there is always a possibility of the loss of the self that turns them into mad women. This paper examines why and how several female protagonists in Game of Thrones are depicted as insane and hysterical as over time their characters grow stronger. The analogous arrangement of madness and femininity blocks their access to the position of normality in this fictional world. Moreover, female abnormality is a clear form of female normality since, weak or strong, women like Daenerys, Sansa, Arya, or Cersei end up being labeled as insane or hysterical by the patriarchal normativity. In the fictional world of Westeros, madness and gender performative discourses form the framework of behavioral traits that lead its female protagonists towards madness. This paper will use gender theories and Butler’s performative acts to explain the attitudes of the writer as well as the creators of Game of Thrones towards female insanity and the reasons behind the depiction.

The Circular Evolution of Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s Gender Discourse: Traces of Utopia and Dystopia 'The Yellow Wallpaper' and "Herland"

This article argues that the transformation of Charlotte Perkins Gilman's gender discourse from dystopia to utopia, exemplified by means of the commonly perceived evolution from her tale "The Yellow Wallpaper" (1892) to her novel Herland (1915), does not follow a linear trajectory from oppression to feminist jubilee, but rather presents a circular progression. As an author, Gilman is able to encounter spaces of creativity in creative displays of female insanity as a result of patriarchal subjection, and instances of subjugation in idealised all-female contexts. Both works contribute manifestations of oppression and exultation, even if they were written at different stages of the author's career, and have conventionally been considered as significantly dissimilar in their respective gender approach. This article aims to delineate a tendency toward circular evolution rather than linear progression by means of unveiling displays of utopia in “The Yellow Wallpaper” and of dystopia in Herland. These premises will be achieved through a comparative analysis of "The Yellow Wallpaper" and Herland by means of identifying traces of narratological features pertaining to dystopian and utopian fiction in both works.

“The Blue Rose” by Lesia Ukrainka as the ‘rite de passage’: biography, psychiatry and writing

The paper explores “The Blue Rose” (1896) by Lesia Ukrainka in terms of the ‘rite de passage’ as the text with a ritual function that reflects the cultural, gender, and author status transformations within the field of literature. In the most general sense, the first drama by Lesia Ukrainka is analyzed as an act of initiation into the fin de siècle culture. Peculiar features of this ritual are the critical comments of the modern culture, transformation of the autobiographical facts into aesthetic phenomena, and interiorization of the motif of death.
 “The Blue Rose” discusses a female genetic illness — a popular topic of the late 19th century — and depicts an attempt of escaping into the illusionary world of platonic love. Representation of the female insanity and ‘unconventional love’, as well as the critique of a bourgeois view of happiness and the patriarchal world, is also an important aspect of the drama. References to the unpublished materials of Lesia Ukrainka’s archive — her excerpts from the “Psychiatry” by Krafft-Ebing — allow concluding that “The Blue Rose” treats insanity as a psychiatric and not a psychological phenomenon. The mother-daughter relations as well as the tension of the mother-son relations in the family of Kosaches are also an important element in Lesia Ukrainka’s work.
 “The Blue Rose” (1896) is a multidimensional and experimental drama. Its author transforms numerous autobiographical facts into cultural situations and engages in a discussion on the topical themes and motifs of the fin de siècle, in particular female insanity, hysteria, and maternity. The writer employs naturalistic methods of analysis and reinforces descriptions of female insanity with the facts from psychiatric practice. “The Blue Rose” displays an interest of Lesia Ukrainka in Neoplatonism, which she would later associate with a Neo-romantic impulse ‘ins Blaue’.
 In general, the author did not follow the foreign patterns, as the critiques noted, but explored the Zeitgeist of the new era. She involved authentic practical experience of her own life and the lives of her relatives and friends, analyzed moral norms and psychological states referring to the cultural codes that ranged from “The Romance of the Rose”, Dante, Shakespeare, and Heine to Zola, Ibsen, and Nadson. This practice ensured Lesia Ukrainka’s initiation into the fin de siècle culture and paved her way to the modernist drama.

Catherine Crowe, Charles Dickens, and Perceptions of Female Insanity

Catherine Crowe, Charles Dickens, and Perceptions of Female Insanity

Transformative list-making: challenging heteronormativity and ableism in Ellen Forney’s somatographies

ABSTRACT Drawing on queer theory (Barker, Cvetkovich, Halberstam, Warner) and Foucault’s concept of biopower, my article will explore the exuberant use of lists in Ellen Forney’s graphic somatographics Marbles: Mania, Michelangelo, Depression, and Me and Rock Steady: Brilliant Advice from My Bipolar Life. By situating Forney’s experience of mental illness within the long history of female sexuality and insanity, I discuss the extent to which Forney’s visual account of experiencing and coming to terms with bipolar disorder is positioned within historical and contemporary discourses of heteronormativity and ableism. I argue that it is medical list language and its specific underlying message of not fulfiling a certain norm that complexly intertwines Forney’s experience as a bisexual woman with her experience of being diagnosed with bipolar disorder. Forney senses that her diagnosis and her treatment are latently interwoven with power relations and regimes of normativity. Drawing on the concept of remediation (Bolter/Grusin) I will show how the cartoonist manages to remediate and appropriate the medical lists. As she creates her own lists to keep track of her moods and her reactions to certain medications, Forney dialogises scientific expert discourses with her own story as a patient and counters the authority of medical expertise with the authority of personal experience. Eventually, in her subsequent advice book Rock Steady, she successfully transforms and reinterprets the list form that once created categories and norms into an instrument of queering the dichotomies of mental health and mental illness.

Female Insanity: The Portrayal of a Murderess in Alias Grace

Female Insanity: The Portrayal of a Murderess in Alias Grace

A Comparison of the HCR-20V3 Among Male and Female Insanity Acquittees: A Retrospective File Study

The current retrospective risk assessment study evaluated the use of the Historical-Clinical-Risk Management-20 Version 3 (HCR-20V3) in a sample of 100 male and 24 female insanity acquittees, comparing the presence of risk factors and its validity in assessing violence in a state forensic hospital across males and females. Over an average of 15.5 months, 44.4% of the total sample engaged in any act of violence within the institution, highlighting the need for effective risk assessment and management tools. An equivalent proportion of males and females engaged in violence (42.0% of males and 54.2% of females). Results indicated higher interrater reliability on scoring risk factors among males as compared to females, calling for future research into the role of item indicators across genders and possible differences in interpretations of scoring guidelines. Results indicated that females exhibited similar numerical ratings of presence risk factors as males, although they were rated higher on Past Problems in Relationships and Traumatic Experiences. The relationships between scale scores and violence were higher among males than females. However, gender was not a significant moderator in logistic regression analyses predicting likelihood of violence. Additional research is necessary to evaluate how ratings of risk factors are translated into summary risk estimates, opinions about dangerousness, and treatment interventions, with a particular focus on how such decision-making is influenced by the gender of examinees.

Close-Ups and Curlicues: Female Neurosis in Two Films by Anatole Litvak

This article examines the simultaneous gendering and pathologization of screen space in two films directed by Anatole Litvak, The Snake Pit and Sorry, Wrong Number (US, 1948), released within months of each other. It focuses on two formal phenomena: the morbid close-up and the curlicue camera movement. Magnification of ordinary percepts, or a general and unpleasant accenting of objects in the visual field, is a common complaint in the phenomenology of mental illness, for example, in hysteria, obsession, phobia, and paranoia. An illness removes something from its ordinary context and brings it closer to the subject, who experiences its closeness as enigmatic or distressing. By bringing things closer, however, it also brings them closer together, compacting them into strange and novel figures. Magnification has its cinematic analogue in the close-up, while compaction can be visually rendered by montage or whip pans. The Snake Pit and Sorry, Wrong Number, like other films of the 1940s centered on female insanity, exploit the language of cinema in order to make spectators partake in their pathologized versions of the sensory world. This restructuring of perception by mental illness has also historically been conceived as a deviation of attention from its normal, goal-oriented routines. Attention seems to lose its proper object and so becomes aimless, free floating. In these particular films, the heroines' destabilized attention is figured in whimsical, decorative camera movements. Such curlicues are another means by which the spectator is gradually involved in a world of perceptual morbidity. The article concludes with an extended treatment of paranoia in relation to Sorry, Wrong Number.

Missouri's Not Guilty by Reason of Insanity Acquittees, 1980–2009: Is Gender Important When Comparing Female and Male Insanity Acquittees and Convicted Offenders?

Although increasing attention is being paid to differences between female and male offenders in the correctional population, potential differences between female and male insanity acquittees have not been explored. Also unexplored are the potential differences between female insanity acquittees and their correctional counterparts, both subgroups of the mentally ill offender population. This study analyzed 30 years of insanity acquittals in Missouri, finding that females were more likely to have committed murder, more likely to have been diagnosed with major depression, more likely to be older, more likely to have been married, less likely to have a substance abuse diagnosis, and more likely to be diagnosed with borderline personality disorder than male counterparts. Differences emerged when female insanity acquittees were compared to the female correctional population. Race differences were also found within the female insanity acquittee population. The focal concerns perspective is discussed to interpret implications for future practice and research.

Evaluating conditional release in female insanity acquittees: A risk management perspective.

Evaluating conditional release in female insanity acquittees: A risk management perspective.

‘Madness is a Woman’: Constance Kent and Victorian Constructions of Female Insanity

Puerperal insanity has attracted significant academic attention in cases of Victorian child killing when mothers killed their young children. This article expands the focus of the puerperal insanity narratives in order to address how, or whether these discourses influenced the wider realm of female insanity. By using the Constance Kent case as an exemplar the article explores how medical and legal ‘tests’ translated into a social conception of female insanity. The preponderance of press reports and the decisions reached suggest insanity came to be a ready social answer when women killed children.

From Page to Screen: Transforming M. E. Braddon's Lady Audley's Secret

This paper compares Mary Elizabeth Braddon's 1862 novel, Lady Audley's Secret, with Donald Hounam's 2000 TV adaptation of the text. Braddon's novel is a key example of the sensation literature of the 1860s, characterised by the subversion of notions of Victorian domesticity and femininity. Although not overtly feminist, the novel nevertheless raises important questions about the social situation of the nineteenth-century woman, especially through its concerns with marriage and female insanity. In particular, this essay focuses on the translation of the feminist message from the novel to the screen, and considers the implications of the status of the Victorian woman writer and twentieth-century male scriptwriter on their respective versions of the text. Specific consideration is given to the conclusion of the film adaptation, which is radically different from that of the original narrative. The conclusion of the paper examines the overall effectiveness of Hounam's film adaptation of a Victorian narrative.

'Embarrassed circumstances': gender, poverty, and insanity in the West Riding of England in the early-Victorian years.

Gender assumptions in early-Victorian England held that men derived their identities from work, while women were dependent beings for whom employment was not a central component of identity. Yet just as the New Poor Law positioned women ambiguously, sometimes emphasising women's dependency and other times stressing women's ability to work, so too do asylum records reveal complicated relationships between gender, poverty, and employment. Patient case notes from the West Riding Pauper Lunatic Asylum suggest that employment was a central component of poor women's identities. Female insanity was sometimes attributed to a lack of work, and both medical practitioners and female patients expected poor women to be employed.

Love's Madness: Medicine, the Novel, and Female Insanity, 1800-1865. Helen Small.Orphan Texts: Victorian Orphans, Culture and Empire. Laura Peters.The Domestic Revolution; Enlightenment Feminisms and the Novel. Eve Tavor Bannet.

Previous articleNext article No AccessLove's Madness: Medicine, the Novel, and Female Insanity, 1800-1865. Helen Small. Orphan Texts: Victorian Orphans, Culture and Empire. Laura Peters. The Domestic Revolution; Enlightenment Feminisms and the Novel. Eve Tavor Bannet.Elizabeth FayElizabeth Fay Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by The Wordsworth Circle Volume 32, Number 4Fall 2001 Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/TWC24044899 Views: 9Total views on this site © 2001 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved.PDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.

Dysfunctional domesticity: female insanity and family relationships among the West Riding poor in the mid-nineteenth century.

"Dysfunctional domesticity" contributes to the growing reevaluation of the importance of the history of the family to understanding the history of insanity. Using patient case histories from the West Riding Pauper Lunatic Asylum, this article examines representations of family life among poor in England in the 1830s and 1840s. Among the so-called moral causes of insanity, family relationships held a prominent place. Female patients more than male patients had their mental illnesses attributed to their domestic circumstances: the poverty of their home lives, grief over a death of friends and family, love and marital relationships gone wrong, and violence in their homes. The case histories reveal that poor women experienced many pressures in the domestic sphere, and insanity may have been one way to escape dysfunctional domesticity.

Love's Madness: Medicine, the Novel, and Female Insanity, 1800-1865. Helen Small

<i>Love's Madness: Medicine, the Novel, and Female Insanity, 1800-1865</i>. Helen Small

Medico-legal stories of female insanity: Three nullity suits

Medico-legal stories of female insanity: Three nullity suits

Book Reviews

Covers of the Saturday Evening Post: Seventy Years of Outstanding Illustration from America's Favorite Magazine. A Measure of Memory: Storytelling and Identity in American Jewish Fiction. Victoria Aarons. Beyond the Mafia: Italian Americans and the Development of Las Vegas. Alan Balboni. Dressing in Feathers: The Construction of the Indian in American Popular Culture. S. Elizabeth Bird, ed. Killing the White Man's Indian: Reinventing Native Americans at the End of the Twentieth Century. Fergus Bordewich. Against the Tide: Women Reformers in American Society. Paul A. Cimbala and Randall M. Miller, eds. The Comedy of Democracy. James E. Combs and Dan Nimmo. alt. Culture: An A‐to‐Z Guide to the '90s—Underground “on‐line, and over‐the‐counter.” Steven Daley and Nathaniel Wice. What Trouble I Have Seen: A History of Violence Against Wives. David Peterson Del Mar. The Closed World: Computers and the Politics of Discourse in Cold War America. Paul N. Edwards. Virtual Archaeology: Re‐creating Ancient Worlds. Maurizio Forte and Alberto Siliotti, eds. Main Street Revisited: Time, Space, and Image Building in Small‐Town America. Richard V. Francaviglia. A Visit with Harlan Hubbard. Wade Hall. The Archaeology of the Donner Party. Donald L. Hardesty, with contributions by Michael Brodhead, Donald K. Grayson, Susan Lindstrom, and George L. Miller. Green Culture: Environmental Rhetoric in Contemporary America. Carl G. Herndl and Stuart C. Brown, eds. Shades of Freedom: Racial Politics and Presumptions of the American Legal Process. A. Leon Higginbotham, Jr. Outsiders in 19th‐Century Press History: Multicultural Perspectives. Frankie Hutton and Barbara Straus Reed, eds. Women of the Far Right. The Mothers' Movement and World War II. Glen Jeansonne. The Lively Arts: Gilbert Seldes and the Transformation of Cultural Criticism in the United States. Michael. Kammen. Questions of Travel: Postmodern Discourses of Displacement. Caren Kaplan. White Widow. Jim Lehrer.Psycho: Behind the Scenes of the Classic Thriller. Janet Leigh and Christopher Nickens. Pulp Art: Original Cover Paintings for the Great American Pulp Magazines. Robert Lesser. Big Trouble. J. Anthony Lukas. Belonging to the Army: Camp Followers and Community During the American Revolution. Holly A. Mayer. Icons of American Protestantism: The Art of Warner Sallman. David Morgan, ed. Making Room: The Economics of Homelessness. Brendan O'Flaherty. Art and the Higher Life: Painting and Evolutionary Thought in Late Nineteenth‐Century America. Kathleen Pyne. From Virtue to Character: American Childhood, 1775–1850. Jacqueline S. Reiner. American Women Historians, 1700s‐1990s.Jennifer Scanlon and Shaaron Cosner. Cultural Conservatism, Political Liberalism: From Criticism to Cultural Studies. James Seaton. Love's Madness: Medicine, the Novel, and Female Insanity 1800–1865. Helen Small. Art Carney: A Biography. Michael Seth Starr. John Wayne's America: The Politics of Celebrity. Gamy Wills. Stars in Blue: Movie Actors in America's Sea Services. James E. Wise, Jr., and Anne Collier Rehill. The Anatomy of Prejudices. Elisabeth Young‐Bruehl

Guilty but insane: the insanity defence in Ireland, 1850-1995.

This is a retrospective study describing sociodemographic and clinical characteristics of an almost complete sample of insanity acquittees in Ireland between 1850-1995. Case records and legal files were examined for each of the 437 patients admitted to the Central Mental Hospital under guilty but insane criteria, and a profile of sociodemographic, forensic and clinical data completed in each. The number of insanity acquittees has fallen five-fold since the 19th century. Acquittees were usually single males from rural areas, aged in their 30s, who had committed a violent crime while suffering from a major psychiatric illness. Female insanity acquittees were relatively few in number and were equally likely to have been charged with violent crime, especially against their own children. The mean length of detention was 14.5 years. The insanity defence is rarely used in Ireland, is largely confined to serious offences (especially homicide), and generally results in prolonged detention.

Love's madness: medicine, the novel, and female insanity, 1800-1865

1. Love's Madness 2. Love-Mad Women and the Rhetoric of Gentlemanly Medicine 3. Hyperbole and the Love-Mad Woman: George III, 'Rosa Matilda', and Jane Austen in 1811 4. Love-Mad Women and Political Insurrection in Regency Fiction 5. The Hyena's Laughter: Lucretia and Jane Eyre 6. The Woman in White, Great Expectations, and the Limits of Medicine Select Bibliography Index