Madwoman
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
"“The Yellow Wallpaper,” which Gilman herself called “a description of a case of nervous breakdown,” recounts in the first person the experiences of a woman who is evidently suffering from a severe postpartum psychosis."--The Madwoman in the Attic (1979) by Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar "Here comes the madwoman, dancing, while she dimly remembers something." --Les Chants de Maldoror (1869) by Comte de Lautréamont "Bertha Mason is mad; and she came of a mad family; idiots and maniacs through three generations! Her mother, the Creole, was both a madwoman and a drunkard!—as I found out after I had wed the daughter: for they were silent on family secrets before. Bertha, like a dutiful child, copied her parent in both points."--Jane Eyre (1847) by Charlotte Brontë "We are all hysterics, since Charcot, that grand priest of hysterics, that breeder of chamber hysterics, maintains in his model establishment the Salpêtrière at great expense a number of nervous women among whom he inoculates madness and of whom he makes demoniacs in no time. One needs to be very ordinary, very common, very reasonable to not be classed among hysterics." --"Une femme" (1882) by Guy de Maupassant |
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A madwoman is a woman who is insane.
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In fiction
- "The Yellow Wallpaper" by Charlotte Perkins Gilman
- Bertha Mason, Rochester's mad wife who stays locked in the attic in Jane Eyre
In art
- Head of a Woman (Delacroix)[1], 1822 painting, Eugène Delacroix, sometimes called A Mad Woman.
- Insane Woman[2], 1822 painting, Théodore Géricault
Namesakes
- The Madwoman's Underclothes, a collection of writings by Germaine Greer
- Opium: Diary of a Madwoman , 2007, a film by Szász János
References
- The Madwoman in the Attic, 1979, examines Victorian literature from a feminist perspective
- Out of Her Mind: Women Writing on Madness, a book by Rebecca Shannonhouse
See also
- Mental disorder
- Woman
- Mad
- Madman
- Gender and mental illness
- Postpartum psychosis
- Premenstrual syndrome