Dictionary letter M

M

Madness

“Feminist psychoanalysis helps us understand that madness, or insanity, is defined by culture not by biology. Phyllis Chesler, in her pioneering work Women and Madness (1972), argues that ‘madness’ is a label used for people whose behavior radically departs from what is socially prescribed. What we consider madness, she suggests, is either the action out of the devalued female role or the total or partial rejection of one’s sex role stereotype. Women’s madness is an intense experience of female biological, sexual or cultural castration. Chesler argues that society expects women to have mental illness and that this is part of the definition of what and how women are. Feminism argues that sex-role stereotyping is a prescription for women’s failure and, therefore, for subsequent mental illness. Women who do not conform are labeled mentally ill or deviant.
Madness is often represented in feminist writings, as in other writing, as a form of ‘truthful’ perception. For example, Doris Lessing in particular incorporates the insights of R.D. Laing the radical psychotherapist into The Golden Notebook and subsequent novels.
Feminist critics argue that male writers give madness a different aesthetic function because male writers make ‘madness’ into a philosophy, while women writers use ‘madness’ to define their own lives in the conventions of the literary text. See Gilbert and Gubar (1979). Gilbert and Gubar suggest that the madwoman is a mirror image of the woman writer- a character who vividly projects an author’s rebellious feelings and can subvert patriarchy in fictional form.”

Humm, Maggie. The Dictionary of Feminist Theory, Second Edition. Ohio State University Press: 1995.