Showalter divides the historical period she is studying into three phases: ''psychiatric Victorianism (1830-1870), psychiatric Darwinism (1870-1920), and psychiatric modernism (1920-1980).'' The first period coincides with the construction of the large public asylums that followed the Lunatics Act of 1845. Showalter, the author of ''A Literature of Their Own: Women Writers from Bronte to Lessing,'' argues that feminine mental illness is a protest against feminine subjection and exploitation that women have been labeled mad because mental illness has been defined and codified by male psychiatrists and that changing social attitudes to women have affected psychiatric diagnosis and treatment. Elaine Showalter, in this feminist history of psychiatry in England from 1830 to 1980, has examined how far this preponderance can be regarded as a cultural phenomenon. $19.95.įROM the 17th century to the present day, the number of women in psychiatric care has greatly exceeded the number of men. THE FEMALE MALADY Women, Madness, and English Culture, 1830-1980.

Definition malody