Madhouses, Female âMadnessâ and Forms of Caring in Mary Wollstonecraftâs The Wrongs of Woman, or Maria and Charlotte Smithâs The Young Philosopher

Katrin RÃ¶der

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Chapter 3 Madhouses, Female âMadnessâ and Forms of Caring in Mary Wollstonecraftâs The Wrongs of Woman, or Maria and Charlotte Smithâs The Young Philosopher

In: The Cultural Heritage of Psychiatry and Its Literary Transformations

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Katrin RÃ¶der

Katrin RÃ¶der
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Pages:: 51â70

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004745247_005

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Abstract

In their contemporaneous and strongly interrelated novels, Mary Wollstonecraft and Charlotte Smith respond to a long cultural history of literary constructions of âmadâ female characters that pervaded (and in part still pervade) cultural memory. Romantic literature in particular, being contemporaneous with the first psychiatric revolution that stressed the curability of âmadâ persons through paternalistic care and moral management and challenged earlier forms of treatment based on incarceration, seclusion, deprivation, physical castigation and purges, invests the concept of âmadnessâ with rich philosophical, social, political, moral and spiritual meaning. This chapter explores the ways in which Wollstonecraftâs and Smithâs texts engage the medical, juridical and social discourses of female âmadnessâ and its treatment. It shows that both texts were produced at a historical moment that was characterised by the rise of a condemnation of the treatment of madness through confinement and bondage and by the implementation of moral management. However, the depicted forms of caring that are carried out by madhouse attendants (not by physicians) in the novels effect an activation and transformation of Wollstonecraftâs Maria Venables and Smithâs Laura Glenmorris, female characters who both experience institutionalisation in mental asylums. Instead of enforcing Mariaâs and Lauraâs moral normalisation and docility, the alternative practices of care depicted in the novels provide appreciation, practical, intellectual and emotional support as well as enable the characters to escape from their asylums. At the same time, neither The Wrongs of Woman nor The Young Philosopher project straightforward, unambiguous redemptive endings for the narrative trajectories of their âmadâ female characters. They thereby contribute to a literary heritage of psychiatric care that challenges idealised, individualised notions of cure by revealing the significance of gender norms and of social and political life conditions in practices of institutionalisation and âtreatmentâ as well as demonstrate the complex and embodied nature of mental and social distress.

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The Cultural Heritage of Psychiatry and Its Literary Transformations

Middle Ages to the Present

Series:Â Narratives and Mental Health, Volume: 4

Cover The Cultural Heritage of Psychiatry and Its Literary Transformations

E-Book ISBN:: 9789004745247

Publisher:: Brill

Print Publication Date:: 13 Nov 2025

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Chapter 3 Madhouses, Female âMadnessâ and Forms of Caring in Mary Wollstonecraftâs The Wrongs of Woman, or Maria and Charlotte Smithâs The Young Philosopher

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The Cultural Heritage of Psychiatry and Its Literary Transformations

Middle Ages to the Present

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Chapter 3 Madhouses, Female âMadnessâ and Forms of Caring in Mary Wollstonecraftâs The Wrongs of Woman, or Maria and Charlotte Smithâs The Young Philosopher