Lost Souls: Women, Religion and Mental Illness in the Victorian Asylum

Description

How did the Victorians view mental illness? After discovering the case-notes of women in Victorian asylums, Diana Peschier reveals how mental illness was recorded by both medical practitioners and in the popular literature of the era, and why madness became so closely associated with femininity. Her research reveals the plight of women incarcerated in 19th century asylums, how they became patients, and the ways they were perceived by their family, medical professionals, society and by themselves. Cover Contents List of Plates Preface 1 Introduction: The Sin of Eve and Dangerous Emotions 2 Wives, Mothers and Abuse of Women in the Asylum 3 Women with Religious Excitement 4 Evangelical Sunday School Teaching: Lessons for Girls 5 Physical Illness 6 Asylums and Madness Mirrored in Nineteenth-Century Literature 7 Male Asylum Patients Epilogue Notes Bibliography and Sources Index