For women, madness is a rite of passage. Anne Sexton: “lonely thing, twelve-fingered, out of mind./A woman like that is not a woman, quite./I have been her kind.”1 Taylor Swift: “And there's nothing like a mad woman/What a shame she went mad.”2 Florence Welch: “The magic and the misery, madness and the mystery/Oh, what has it done to me?”3 Ron Weasley to Hermione Granger: “Have you gone mad? Are you a witch or not?”4
Whether it’s poetry or song lyrics, art made in the 20th century and onward is not afraid to embody or confront the Mad Woman archetype. The Mad Woman can be like Anne Sexton’s “twelve-fingered” persona on her way to be burnt at the stake, aware of her “madness” and how she was always ostracized from society, or she can be like first-year Hermione Granger, afraid not of her madness but of not blending into society. The Mad Woman archetype dates back to the now-discredited diagnosis of “Female Hysteria,” a phantom illness rooted in “the ancient Greek concept of a ‘hysterikos’—a ‘wandering womb’ believed to wreak havoc on the female mind and body.”5 Female Hysteria was used most notably during the Victorian Era to pathologize and control women whose behaviors and aspirations deviated from patriarchal societal norms. If you were a woman diagnosed with Female Hysteria, your education, public participation, and ability to leave your home were limited. In extreme cases, you were involuntarily committed to an asylum for a “rest cure.”6 You ceased to be a woman with autonomy – you were the patient and victim of a sick society.
But the Mad Woman has changed now. She is no longer a life-altering diagnosis that inhibits women’s freedom; she is a conduit to that freedom through the reclamation of the ungovernable self in women’s art. To celebrate such a drastic change, Inglenook recommends the following books rooted in women’s hysteria.
Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s short story about a woman’s descent into madness is a literary classic. Written in diary form, the unnamed narrator details her experience at the summer house her husband has brought them. While the house and grounds dazzle her at first, it’s revealed that her husband is also her doctor, and she has been confined to the house under the guise of a “rest cure” for her nervous depression. The narrator’s inability to leave the property, work, or write freely drives her further away from sanity when she discovers the peculiar yellow wallpaper in the empty nursery on the top floor. First published in 1892, Gilman’s short story has withstood the test of time, providing a haunting narrative about the lack of proper care for women’s mental health.
After her doctors and psychiatrists diagnosed her with incurable chronic seizures, Katerina Bryant decided to take matters into her own hands. She immersed herself in the narratives of other women with her strange illness, and those who were considered “hysterical” before modern medicine eliminated hysteria as a formal diagnosis. Blending memoir with literary and historical analysis, Bryant “retells the stories of silenced women, from the ‘Queen of Hysterics’ Blanche Wittmann to Mary Glover’s illness termed ‘hysterica passio’, a panic attack caused by the movement of the uterus — in London in 1602 and more.” Through resurrecting the stories of these silenced women, Bryant regains her own voice. More than a patient, she is a woman unafraid to advocate for her autonomy.
Eric LaRocca’s 2015 queer horror novella tackles female loneliness, internet culture, and the consequences of human desire. Set in the early 2000s, the novella follows Agnes and Zoe as they connect through a pre-Snapchat-era internet chat room. It is Agnes attempting to sell her grandmother’s apple peeler which begins their seemingly innocent friendship – but, as with many of LaRocca’s works, everything is not what it seems. Zoe’s influence over Agnes quickly turns their relationship toxic, with Zoe emotionally and psychologically abusing Agnes through their emails and instant messages. As described by the book’s publisher Weirdpunk Books, the darkness in this long-distant friendship “threatens to forever transform them once they finally succumb to their most horrific desires.”
Now a major motion picture starring Amy Adams, Rachel Yoder’s novel Nightbitch has captured the global attention of readers and film critics alike. When a mother puts her ambitious art career on hold to become a stay-at-home mom, the reality of changing diapers, heating bottles, and, two years later, dealing with her toddler's incessant demands pushes her over the cliff of sanity. Left alone with her child as her husband travels for work five days out of the week, the mother slips into a postpartum depression without any people or resources to grapple with her symptoms. Then she discovers fur growing from her skin and canines growing from her mouth, and her life as a woman changes forever. The Chicago Review of Books praised Yoder’s speculative fiction novel as 2021’s “debut of the year. A feral fairy tale of maternal dissatisfaction, it’s best to go into this one knowing as little possible, the better to let Yoder work her devious magic on you.”
As one of my favorite short story collections, I would be remiss not to include Carmen Maria Machado’s Her Body and Other Parties on our list. Magical, queer, feminist, and magical realist, Machado’s 2017 collection tackles what drives women mad in every form. One of the most popular stories from this debut, “The Husband Stitch,” introduces readers to the themes of body horror and patriarchal gaslighting woven throughout these 245 pages. In “The Husband Stitch,” the unnamed female narrator falls in love with a man at a party, leading her to marry him and bear his child. While their love story sounds like The American Dream, the green ribbon she wears around her neck—and never takes off—sets their union apart from a typical romance story.
Elizabeth Wurtzel’s memoir Prozac Nation offers an authentic look into being a woman grappling with atypical depression and feeling “hysterical” from medical and familial gaslighting. This bestselling book tells the story of how teenage Wurtzel’s depression diagnosis did not cure or save her, despite the drug therapy she was subjected to and her parents’ pleas to just “be normal” again. The 2001 film adaptation starring Christina Ricci brings the author’s real-life struggles to the big screen, but it was this 1994 publication that audiences fell in love with first. For anyone seeking an honest coming-of-age tale on anxiety, depression, and needing therapy beyond the therapist’s couch, Prozac Nation is as honest as it gets.
For a research-heavy read, look no further than Unwell Women, Elinor Cleghorn uncovers a long, troubling history of how women’s pain has been misunderstood, dismissed, and frequently labeled as “hysteria” by the medical establishment. Tracing centuries of diagnoses, from ancient beliefs about the wandering womb to Victorian-era neurological theories, Cleghorn reveals how cultural bias shaped medical narratives that silenced women and pathologized their bodies. Through vivid accounts of figures such as Blanche Wittmann and others whose suffering was reduced to spectacle or myth, she demonstrates how hysteria functioned as both diagnosis and control. Blending history, criticism, and personal insight, Cleghorn reclaims these stories, exposing the systemic roots of medical misogyny while amplifying the voices of women long ignored or disbelieved.
There may never be a world in which women’s emotions, assertiveness, or aspirations are free from being seen as “crazy” or deriving from madness, but the art we consume can allow us to work towards one. Literature can be both a reflection of our society and an escape from it. These books act as both for women learning to undo centuries of the patriarchal “hysteria” diagnosis imposed upon them.
Alexandra Rae is a feminist writer, editor, and revisionist from Ohio. She is a submissions reader for Narratively and editorial assistant for Brink Books. Find her on Instagram @theresonationofalexandra.
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