Hysteria In Jane Eyre And The Yellow Wallpaper

Hysteria made a prominent mark on history, not only for women but also men. Hysteria is discussed by Victorian authors such as Charlotte Brontë and Charlotte Perkins Gilman. Their works of Jane Eyre and “The Yellow Wallpaper” give a woman’s perspective to the commonality of diagnosing women with hysteria during the Victorian era. Brontë’s Bertha Mason and Gilman’s Jane are examples of women and their reactions to the treatments forced on them. Hysteria was a medical diagnosis associated solely with women, until Sigmund Freud. The symptoms of this psychosis ranged drastically from nervousness to hallucinations, linked to side effects of an anxiety disorder and sexual deprivation. During the Victorian era women who caused trouble, particularly to the men in their lives, or showed symptoms of a not easily diagnosed disease were commonly written off as being hysterical. Typical treatments for hysteria were seclusion, bed rest, and pelvic massages. Later treatments evolved hydrotherapy, shock therapy, …show more content…
That being said, the treatments utilized to “cure” hysteria were the starting point for female sexual liberation and the understanding of female sexuality.
Although hysterical symptoms are referenced in ancient scripts before Hippocrates, the term, or at least a relating term for hysteria, was not used until Hippocrates work on the subject in the 5th century BC. The epidemiology of hysteria at the time was related to “the abnormal movements of the uterus in the body” (Carta et al. 111), a side effect from sexual depravity. Plato second this opinion in his belief that “the idea of a female madness related to the lack of a normal sexual life: Plato, in Timaeus, argues that the uterus is sad and unfortunate when it does