Women of the asylum
Subtitle: voices from behind the walls, 1840-1945
By: written and edited by Jeffrey L. Geller and Maxine Harris ; foreword by Phyllis Chesler.
Contributors: Geller, Jeffrey L.; Harris, Maxine.
Publisher: Anchor Books
Published: 1994
Place of publication: New York
Language: eng
Number of pages: 349
Subjects: Mentally ill women -- United States -- Biography.; Psychiatric hospital patients -- United States -- Biography.; Psychiatric hospital care -- United States -- History -- Sources.; Psychiatry -- United States -- History -- Sources.; Women -- United States -- Social conditions.
Description: Jeffrey Geller and Maxine Harris have amassed twenty-six first person accounts of women who were placed in mental institutions against their will, often by male family members for holding views or behaving in ways that deviated from the norms of their day. Taken as a whole, these pieces offer a fascinating and frightening portrait of life both behind and outside the asylum walls.

Geller and Harris's accompanying history of both societal and psychiatric standards for women reveals that often even the prevailing conventions reinforced the perception that these women were "mad.".

Much has been written about the Victorian ideal of womanhood, the reform movements of the late nineteenth century, and the suffragettes of the early twentieth century, but still very little is known about those women who were pushed aside or hidden away. Women of the Asylum is the first book to give them the opportunity to speak for themselves.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. [345]-[350]).