Echoes of Madness: The Intersection of Literature and Women’s Realities

Echoes of Madness: The Intersection of Literature and Women’s Realities
Sweekruti Panda and Prasanta Kumar Padhi

Abstract

Historically and cross-culturally, women exhibiting profound emotion, challenging societal norms, or opposing confinement have frequently been deemed insane, a trend that has historically undermined their experiences and perpetuated gender norms. In this context, madness is redefined as a form of resistance, a coded language of dissent, or a symbolic expression of repressed pain, rather than as a mental illness. This paper analyses the term hysteria, originating from the Greek word hystera (“uterus”) and historically employed to pathologise female distress as a reproductive disorder, which subsequently became a pivotal framework for interpreting women’s madness in English literature. This article presents a succinct transcultural genealogy of “female madness” from pre-colonial India to contemporary global literature, situated at the convergence of medical history, literary studies, and feminist theory. It examines the evolution of diagnoses regarding women’s perceived deviance, ranging from the doshic unmāda in Ayurvedic texts and spirit possession in folk traditions to the colonial introduction of European hysteria and its enduring presence in both domestic and psychiatric contexts.