The Hysterical Woman: Sex Roles and Role Conflict in 19thcentury America

Smith-Rosenberg, Carroll

doi:10.1515/9783110976328.101

Cited by 22 publications

(16 citation statements)

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“…As Carroll Smith-Rosenberg has pointed out, in Victorian America privileged women often cultivated poor health in order to escape from the demanding and painful constrictions of respectable lifestyles. 40 A successful hysteric could use her acquired frailty to escape from conventional duties, and to draw attention to herself and her needs, thus forcing others to look after her, instead of she them. Most respectable Englishwomen had even fewer potential exits from their monotonous lives than American women did.…”

Section: The Discovery Of Excess Female Mortalitymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…66 As Indian women married and became reproductively active (ages 15-34) excess female mortality reappeared in a particularly strong form. But in England, excess female mortality continued at about the same level whether or not most women were single and working (ages [15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24] or married and having children (25)(26)(27)(28)(29)(30)(31)(32)(33)(34)(35)(36)(37)(38)(39)(40). On the whole, both sets of women had approximately the same fertility levels (English women were having slightly more than five children on average in the mid-nineteenth century, while Indian women in 1950 had about six births.)…”

Section: Explaining Excess Male Mortality In the Twentieth Centurymentioning

confidence: 99%

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Welfare, mortality, and gender. Continuity and change in explanations for male/female mortality differences over three centuries

Johansson¹

1991

Cont. Change

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L'espérance de vie à la naissance est souvent employée comme index de la prospérité relative de différentes populatoins. Mais dans ce cadre les écarts entre la longévité féminine/masculine sont anormaux. Les femmes ont été et sont encore moins privilégiées que les hommes, pourtant elles vivent plus longtemps. Cette situation a fait croître l'idée que les femmes ont d'immenses avantages biologiques sur les hommes. Mais des données historiques peuvent être utilisées pour démontrer que dans la tranche d'âge de 3 à 55 ans des entrecroisements très prononcés de déces ont eu lieu quant aux taux de mortalité féminine/masculine aux âges spécifiques. Pour justifier cette variabilité historique il faut les remplacer par d'autres plus complexes, qui examinent comment des types de comportement influencés par la culture et propres au sexe, exposés à différents milieux de maladie, se traduisent biologiquement par des taux de mortalité propres à l'age. Lorsqu'on rend justice à la complexité biologique et culturelle, on peut expliquer comment des niveaux inférieurs de bien-être relatif peuvent produire des taux de mortalité inférieurs pour des populations désavantagées dans certains climats de maladie.

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Section: The Discovery Of Excess Female Mortalitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Explaining Excess Male Mortality In the Twentieth Centurymentioning

confidence: 99%

Welfare, mortality, and gender. Continuity and change in explanations for male/female mortality differences over three centuries

Johansson¹

1991

Cont. Change

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“…There are parallels between such narratives and those of female nervousness in the nineteenth century, a phenomenon that has been interpreted by some historians as a way some women consciously or unconsciously sought to escape marital duties. 119 As in the later period, early modern women who claimed that their health suffered as a result of their marriages, were suspected of feigning these symptoms. 120 The Dictionary for the Fair Sex (1694) told husbands not to 'Regard' women's tears.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

When a Woman Hates Her Husband: Love, Sex and Fruitful Marriages in Early Modern England

Astbury¹

2020

Gender & History

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If spouses' 'hearts be not united in love', their seed could not 'unite to cause Conception', the seventeenthcentury astrologer-physician, Nicholas Culpeper noted. The authors of early modern medical and conduct texts argued that marital compatibility and harmony were necessary for a union to be fruitful. But where historians of sexuality have assumed that such exhortations spoke to the centrality of sexual pleasure, male and female, to conception, this article contends that having a happy and procreative marriage required far more than achieving a certain measure of enjoyment in sex. Working out whether a prospective spouse would be suitable was a complex process that took into account social, financial, emotional, bodily, religious and astrological similarities. Drawing on conduct manuals, childbearing guides, medical casebooks and the accounts of two unhappy wives, Anne Dormer and Sarah Cowper, this article shows that while the frameworks of compatibility and incompatibility in medical and conduct literature seemed to offer a way for talking about unavoidable and conscionable disagreements and childlessness, there was considerable pressure on women, rather than men, to overcome unhappiness and ensure fruitfulness. The seventeenth-century astrologer-physician Nicholas Culpeper explained that there were multiple causes of childlessness. There might be male or female 'impotency in conception'; 1 the womb might be too narrow, so it was not 'apt' to 'receive the Yard [penis] fitly'. Both husbands and wives had to 'spend' their seed, although precisely what this meant was sometimes ambiguous. Even if this seed was jointly emitted, it might be 'unfruitful' because one or both parties were unhealthy, or because there needed to be a 'certain proportion' between their seed and between their constitutions. The 'occult qualities' in seed could either 'agree or disagree'. 2 The 1656 edition of Culpeper's Directory explained that their complexions might be too similar to be able to conceive a child, for it was the 'universal course of Nature' that contraries were like to increase. 3 A third problem could be caused by the womb not 'sucking' the seed or not receiving it in a 'right manner'. Culpeper termed this the 'attractate faculty', which, when impeded as a result of 'distempers of the Womb' or because a 'woman hates her husband', prevented male seed from reaching where it needed to be. Fourthly he noted that sometimes the womb was too 'weak' to retain the seed, even if it could or wanted to attract it. But this too had a close relationship to the tenor of the marriage.

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“…In writings attributed to Hippocrates, hysterical epilepsy was described and attributed to the womb floating in the body and causing symptoms where it came to rest 9 , while Aretaeus classified two varieties of epilepsyordinary and hysterical 3 . In 19th century America, cases were recorded among women of 'hysterical fits' which mimicked epileptic seizures, and included symptoms such as sobbing, violent laughter and a deathlike trance 10 . However, some of the earliest systematic descriptions of the phenomenon were made by Freud 11,12 and Breuer and Freud 13 .…”

Section: Background and Contextmentioning

confidence: 99%

Non-epileptic attack disorder (NEAD): a comprehensive review

Francis¹,

Baker²

1999

Seizure

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Non-epileptic attack disorder (NEAD) represents a well-recognized clinical problem with a reported incidence among individuals with a diagnosis of intractable epilepsy as high as 36%. A failure to identify this disorder may lead to certain risks for the patient including polypharmacy, anticonvulsant toxicity, hazardous intervention, social and economic demands and a lack of recognition or neglect of any underlying psychological distress. This review provides a description of NEAD in an historic and societal context and discusses the variety of terminology which has been applied to this psychophysiological phenomenon. Epidemiology and associated methodological limitations; and diagnostic and classification issues related to NEAD in comparison to epilepsy are considered. The problems of failure to recognize NEAD in comparison to epilepsy are considered. The problems of failure to recognize NEAD are outlined, and theoretical and empirical aetiological issues are discussed.

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The Hysterical Woman: Sex Roles and Role Conflict in 19thcentury America

Cited by 22 publications

References 0 publications

Welfare, mortality, and gender. Continuity and change in explanations for male/female mortality differences over three centuries

Welfare, mortality, and gender. Continuity and change in explanations for male/female mortality differences over three centuries

When a Woman Hates Her Husband: Love, Sex and Fruitful Marriages in Early Modern England

Non-epileptic attack disorder (NEAD): a comprehensive review

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