Writing women's madness: literature and the development of gendered psycho-medical theory, 1845-1914

In the nineteenth century, women were thought to be particularly vulnerable to insanity. The female reproductive system was believed to have a powerful impact on the brain and nerves, making women prone to specific kinds of mental disease linked to the activity of the uterus and ovaries. Scholars (such as Elaine Showalter) have shown how psycho-medical theories of female insanity were informed by contemporary cultural beliefs about women as naturally domestic and maternal. Yet these scholars have not explained how cultural and medical ideas about women’s minds were connected, taking it for granted as an inevitable consequence of patriarchal Victorian society. This approach ignores the active process of transformation that must necessarily have taken place in the formation of such theories, and the complexity of doctors’ beliefs about the female mind, which cannot be reduced to misogynistic attitudes alone. This thesis builds on the work of Showalter et al. by critically analysing the mechanisms through which theories of female insanity were created.

Writing was one of the primary ways in which knowledge was formed and communicated in nineteenth-century psychological medicine. This thesis argues that it is only through an analysis of written discourse about the female mind, bringing into view the multiple contexts in which this discourse was produced, that we can achieve a full understanding of theories of female insanity. Looking first at how medical ideas about women’s minds were established in psycho-medical textbooks, I will then explore how these ideas were communicated to, and adapted by, those outside of the profession in the general periodical press. Next, I turn to literature to examine female patient experiences of mental illness, discussing Amy Levy’s alternative concept of melancholia. Lastly, I consider how ideas about the health of the female mind impacted the first women to work in psychological medicine at the turn of the twentieth century, focusing in particular on the life and career of Helen Boyle.