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FIRELIGHT
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Prepared by: Journey McAndrews│ Fall 2012 │ Contact: (859) 619-0962
Female Hysteria and the Rest “Cure”:
The Truth Hidden Beneath Gilman’s Wall-paper
WS 201
Journey McAndrews
Bluegrass Community & Technical College
Fall 2012
Charlotte Perkins Gilman
(July 3, 1860 – August 17, 1935)
"Here she comes, running out of prison and off the
pedestal; chains off, crown off, halo off, just a live woman."
Gilman’s The Yellow Wallpaper is not
only a premiere feminist manifesto, it
is also one of the strongest polemics
of its time against the biases the
medical profession has against women
and their “particular” diseases.
The Women Behind the Yellow Wall-paper
Between 1700 and 1921, countless women across Europe and America underwent
the torturous treatment for a “medical” condition known as hysteria.
Hysteria became a “catchall” diagnosis for any ailment experienced by women.
In reality, many of the symptoms were the result or real illnesses, including
postpartum depression, epilepsy, allergies, ovarian cysts, migraines, heart disease,
cancer, miscarriages, and even somatoforms that manifested as a result of living in
domestic abuse situations.
Hysteria—A History
For at least two-thousand years the “symptoms” of
hysteria have been chronicled in “medical research—of
which the “wandering womb” theory was a precursor
to this “disease”.
All early research was conducted by men, and even
modern medicine relied on this antiquated and
misogynistic “conclusions”.
In fact, it wasn’t until the 1980’s that the term
“hysteria” fell out of favor with medical professionals
and was officially changed to conversion disorder by
the American Psychological Association.
The Narrator vs. the Author
In literature studies we are taught that we should never presume the literary work
represents the author’s life or personal opinions.
However, sometimes this is the case, at least it was with Charlotte Perkins Gilman.
After the birth of her first and only child, she experienced postpartum depression
and was treated by a noted physician of the time—Silas Weir Mitchell, who
prescribed “the rest cure”.
The Yellow Wall-paper
More than Gothic horror, more than a feminist
protest against “treatments” for hysteria, The
Yellow Wall-paper is a novella that chronicles
one woman’s anguishing experience with
postpartum depression.
But beyond this, The Yellow Wall-paper gives a
voice to all those women who married and
became mothers despite knowing they were
not suited to fulfills these roles and the
“duties” that came with them.
The Yellow Wall-paper
*The room as metaphor for the confinement of marriage
*Jane as the “other woman”
*Woman as child
*She tears the paper at the end, like a bratty child
*Women fit to have children, but not care for them
*“the baby”—a nameless female child
*ironic statements—“I am glad my case is not serious.”
Silas Weir Mitchell & the Rest Cure
Silas Weir Mitchell (February 15, 1829 – January 4, 1914) was one of many
male physicians who used unusual methods to treat his hysterical female
patients. His main philosophy on “treatment” was to force his female
patients into a lifelong avoidance of intellectual and creative activities.
The irony is that Mitchell was also a writer who penned short stories for
the Atlantic Monthly, among other notable magazines.
Mitchell, an American physician, specialized in nerve maladies and he was
best known now for pioneering “the rest cure”, which became a common
treatment for hysteria and other afflictions of the “frail” female nervous
system.
He earned the nickname “Dr. Diet and Dr. Quiet” because he
often subjected his patients to weird and strict diets
and confinement to their beds.
His work on hysteria also greatly influenced Sigmund Freud.
Mitchell Weir & the “Rest Cure”
Weir instructed Gilman to, “Live as domestic a life as possible. Have
your child with you all the time... Lie down an hour after each meal.
Have but two hours’ intellectual life a day. And never touch pen,
brush or pencil as long as you live.”
Gilman tried to follow her doctor’s advice, and she tried to follow
society’s expectations for women, especially in the roles of wife and
mother, but she slipped deeper into depression and almost
experienced a full-psychotic breakdown.
Gilman and her husband, Walter Stetson, mutually knew that they
must divorce in order for her to recover and go on to live a productive
life.
The author left her husband in 1888 and began to improve almost
immediately. In the beginning Gilman took her young daughter
Katherine with her as she visited friends around the country.
George Cheyne & The English Malady
George Cheyne (1671-1743)
With the publication of George Cheyne's The English Malady, a
treatise on the “dis-eases” of the European upper-class, terms like
spleen, melancholy, and hysteria—the catchall “medical” phrase
for nearly all ailments experienced by the female body, enter
what could be called early medical literature.
These medical “conditions” become an area of interest and study
in the medical profession, literature, and society of this era.
It is important to note that Cheyne thought these “dis-eases”
were a condition of only the upper class—educated,
sophisticated, intelligent, because poor people were to
commonplace to experience such complex emotional and mental
issues.
George Cheyne & The English Malady
One of Chenye’s famous male “melancholy” clients was the poet
Alexander Pope, who suffered terrible bouts of depression.
Pope’s most famous poem on hysteria and melancholy is The Rape of
the Lock—a mock-heroic narrative poem, which was a form of poetry
that had all of the tenents of an epic heroic poem like The Odyssey,
but incorporated elements of parody.
In the poem a young woman has a lock of her hair clipped, which was
Pope’s way of mocking the standards of beauty at the time in which
the poem was written.
The poem also expresses the darker side of human emotions, in
particular what could be called clinical depression or the lows that
accompany bipolar disorder.
Alexander Pope
Another Famous “Hysteric” Author
While she may have wrote the first feminist polemic
against the oppression of women with her now
notorious A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, Mary
Wollstonecraft Shelly was a notable “hysteric” who,
unlike Gilman, embraced this disease.
Wollstonecraft’s love for Gilbert Imlay led to emotional
and psychological turmoil, and she attempted suicide
after Imlay abandoned her.
In the book Her Own Woman: The Life of Mary
Wollstonecraft, Diane Jacobs proclaims, “Mary was not
mad . . . she was seriously depressed—inconsolable”
(203) after Imlay left her.
This “depression” as Jacobs describes it, is interpreted by
G.J. Barker-Benfield in his article “Mary Wollstonecraft's
Depression and Diagnosis:”, to be something more
serious and more socially fashionable—the female
malady known as hysteria.
Another Famous “Hysteric” Author
Barker-Benfield proclaims that Wollstonecraft suffered from classic
symptoms of hysteria when she exhibited headaches, pain in her side, waning
health, fatigue, “fits of trembling, a rising in the throat, nervous fever”,
tremors, gaiety, and various other complaints; and yet, for all her symptoms,
Wollstonecraft wondered if her hysteria was “all in [her] mind.”
These revelations on Wollstonecraft’s personal life demonstrate that she, and
women in general, were caught in a binary trap wherein no woman could
fully espouse a complete feminist polemic because other factors—such as
love, the need for survival (marriage being the most viable “job” for a
woman) education issues, and child baring (Wollstonecraft had two children),
hindered her ability to live autonomously from larger (male) society.
While Wollstonecraft may have triumphantly argued to “persuade women to
endeavor to acquire strength, both of mind and body, and to convince them
that the soft phrases, susceptibility of heart, delicacy of sentiment . . . are
almost synonymous with epithets of weakness”, she failed to convince herself
of these very same feminist beliefs. Her hysterical love for Imlay seriously
hindered her feminist freedom.
Other Notable Works by Gilman
Herland—a utopian novel that centers on the lives of
of a lost civilization populated by only women, that is,
Until three men crash their plane into the hidden
village that has ben inhabited for years by women.
Women and Economics in this work the author explored the
emerging social demand for equality in pay, but she also
explored the role family, marriage, and children had on a
woman’s life, in particular, the role these factors played in her
earning a descent wage.
Forerunner for Gender Equality in Parenting
Gilman was a forerunner of men’s parental
rights as well. In fact, when she sent her young
daughter back to live with her father and his new
wife, she did so because she felt he had the right
to be in his daughter’s life. She also felt his new
wife was better suited to care for the child than
she was.
Gilman was against making a difference between
the sexes, she wanted what most women have
wanted from the onset of feminism—equality
for human life.
The “father” of Psychoanalytic Misogyny
“There is never any danger of corrupting an
an inexperienced girl. For where there is no
knowledge of sexual processes even in the
unconscious, no hysterical symptom will arise;
and where hysteria is found there can no longer
be any question of ‘innocence of mind’.”
Sigmund Freud
The Curious Case of “Dora”
One of Freud’s most famous hysteria cases was “Dora”, a young woman who
was sent to him for treatment by her father.
Freud published her now infamous case-study, even though the young
“hysteric” stopped treatment and challenged Freud’s methods.
Freud was incredibly apprehensive about presenting his findings on “Dora”—a
pseudonym he gave her.
The patient’s real name was Ida Bauer, a Jew who ended up in America to
escape the Nazis.
Other “Treatments” for Hysteria
• Manual massage (in the 19th Century hysteria became a sexual disorder and
women were sent to doctors for a “massage-cure”
• Cold water poured over the patient while she was bound
• Locked away in a prison, or asylum cell
• Exorcisms
• Starved
• Beaten
• Abandoned
Other “Treatments” for Hysteria
Hysteria and the DSM
Current psychiatric terminology distinguishes two types
of disorder that were previously labeled 'hysteria':
somatoform and dissociative.
The dissociative disorders in DSM-IV-TR include
dissociative amnesia, dissociative fugue, dissociative
identity disorder, depersonalization disorder, and
dissociative disorder not otherwise specified.
Somatoform disorders include conversion disorder,
somatization disorder, pain disorder, hypochondriasis
(which was once linked to melancholy in male patients)
and body dysmorphic disorder. In somatoform
disorders, the patient exhibits physical symptoms such
as low back pain or limb paralysis, without apparent
physical cause.
Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders
Postmodern Feminists & Hysteria
In Empire of the Senseless, Kathy Acker
writes, “Literature is that which denounces
and slashes apart the repressing machine at
the level of the signified.”
Essentially, postmodern feminist authors,
both male and female, seek to deconstruct
meaning, especially meaning that is
culturally attached to Meta Narratives—
such as “the man is the head of the
household”, “Christ is the Son of God”,
America is the land of the free”, and so on.
Meta Narratives are big overarching
themes, master ideas, or ideologies that
most people accept to be true.
Kathy Acker’s Rejection of Freud’s Hysterical “Madwomen”
Some facts about Kathy Acker
•
Acker wrote transgressive literature—i.e. literature that transgresses against social norms, customs,
and beliefs
•
Acker often wrote pseudo-feminist texts—it was sometimes hard to tell if she was a feminist or
writing in a theory and philosophy of her own
•
Acker was charged with obscenity in several countries and her work has been banned since the 1970’s
until now
•
Acker created female characters and personas that embodied an hysterical discourse within their
voices—she did this to rally against patriarchal oppression and the sexual abuse of women and
female children.
•
Acker grew up as a wealthy Jew living in New York. Her father sexually abused her from early
childhood until she ran away from home as a youth.
Kathy Acker’s Rejection of Freud’s Hysterical “Madwomen”
Acker has a reoccurring child character in many of her
works—”Janey” as she is sometimes called, is a ten-year-old
incest casualty who often speaks like a woman and has
promiscuous sex with people along with a sexual
relationship with her father.
Little “Janey” is Acker’s postmodern rendition of the
“hysterical” female, only now the stock character is given a
larger socio-political purpose—she speaks the language of
abuse without hesitation—In the novel Blood and Guts in
High School, Janey refers to her father as, “Boyfriend,
brother, sister, money, amusement, and father.”
Kathy Acker’s Rejection of Freud’s Hysterical “Madwomen”
By its very nature postmodern transgressive literature seeks to deconstruct
metanarratives that any given society (or societies) embrace, especially those
so culturally entrenched that references to them have become fused within
everyday language.
This entrenchment is no more apparent than with how Sigmund Freud’s
psychoanalytic jargon has become part of everyday language not only in
American culture, but in many other parts of the world.
Therefore, it is unsurprising that Acker’s work seeks to deconstruct Freud’s
model of the hysterical woman; and in doing so, Acker rejects Freud’s beliefs
about how hysterical symptoms are linked to female sexuality—or rather,
maladies associated with female sexuality.
Gilman & Acker Reject Modern Medicine
Kathy Acker died of breast cancer at age 50. When she was
diagnosed she rejected modern medical treatments and instead
opted to spend the rest of her days in an alternative treatment
center in Mexico. Being a life-long artist, one that, because of the
controversial nature of her work did not enjoy commercial or
academic success, died penniless and her friends helped pay off
her medical debts.
Charlotte Perkins Gilman was diagnosed with breast cancer in
1932. She battled the disease for more than three years before
committing suicide in 1935. In her suicide note she wrote: “When
all usefulness is over, when one is assured of an unavoidable and
imminent death, it is the simplest of human rights to choose a
quick and easy death in place of a slow and horrible one.”
Medical Sexism Goes Both Ways
Not only did Victorian era Europe create outlandish rules for women
when it came to the birth and care of children, men were usually
discouraged from being near their wives during the birthing process.
Female anatomy, biological, and emotionality have always been
cloaked in mystery, taboo, and fear. And yet, the female body has
always been on display, poked, explored, and violated.
Moreover, the male body has always enjoyed a status that was
above medical and social scrutiny, but this has led to men being
Ignored in the medical profession because they are believed to be
stronger, more stoic, less emotional. This is especially true in the
mental health profession—men have been larger ignored or
“treated” differently than women when it came to the kind of
mental health diagnosis and treatments they received.
Medical Sexism Goes Both Ways
• Women are more likely to be diagnosed with a
mental illness than men. This fact is alarming
because it indicates sexism in both directions.
• Men are less likely to be diagnosed with a mental
illness because (1) there is a social stigma attached
to the “mentally weak” male, (2) men hide their
mental illnesses more readily by allocating
excessive time to work, abusing alcohol, drugs, or
becoming obsessed with hobbies.
• Likewise, men are more likely to suffer in silence
for years as mental illness and emotional issues go
unresolved and ignored because they are too
embarrassed or ashamed to seek help for their
conditions.
Medical Sexism Goes Both Ways
Mental illness in men has been called “a silent crisis, a
sleeper issue that has crept into the minds of millions.”
Many times, male mental illness is a cause for domestic
violence and abuse. Men either don’t know they are ill, or
refuse to get treatment, thus they take their frustrations
and symptoms out on their family members.
Boys DO Cry
Cultural beliefs outside the medical field also influence the
medical climate. Indeed, individual families who call their
male children sissies when they get hurt and cry, are, in
fact, creating an emotional break in these children that
lingers long into adulthood.
Boys do cry just as well as girls. Emotions are part of being
human. Males and females are equally prone to mental
illness and deserve equal and fair treatments for their
ailments.
Hysteria is Still with Us
In films and books and popular references—the image of the
“mad” hysterical woman is all around.
A Dangerous Method (2011 film) deals with Jung and Freud’s “treatments” for hysteria.
Books on Hysteria
Hysteria Beyond Freud by Sandra L. Gilman et al
The Female Malady by Elaine Showalter
The Madwoman in the Attic by Sandra M. Gilbert & Susan Gubar
The Technology of Orgasm by Rachel P. Maines
The English Malady: Enabling and Disabling Fictions edited by Glen Colburn