Description
| Product ID: | 9780860688693 |
| Product Form: | Paperback / softback |
| Country of Manufacture: | GB |
| Title: | The Female Malady |
| Subtitle: | Women, Madness and English Culture, 1830-1980 |
| Authors: | Author: Elaine Showalter |
| Page Count: | 320 |
| Subjects: | European history, British & Irish history, History, History, Gender studies: women and girls, Psychiatry, Modern history to 20th century: c 1700 to c 1900, 20th century history: c 1900 to c 2000, Gender studies: women, Psychiatry, United Kingdom, Great Britain, c 1800 to c 1900, 20th century |
| Description: | A vital counter-interpretation of madness in women, showing how it is often a consequence of, rather than a deviation from, the traditional female role. 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. |
| Imprint Name: | Virago Press Ltd |
| Publisher Name: | Little, Brown Book Group |
| Country of Publication: | GB |
| Publishing Date: | 1987-05-07 |
