Review: Women of the Asylum
Editorial Review - Kirkus ReviewsA hundred years of first-person reports from women committed to mental institutions that seem no less distressing in the 20th century than in the 19th. Geller (Psychiatry/Univ. of Massachusetts) and Harris (Down from the Pedestal, 1994) have excerpted accounts from the speeches, journals, reports, and books of well-known and unknown women who found not asylum, but degradation, injustice, deprivation, and even torture in the ghettos for the mentally ill where they were confined. The testimonies begin with Elizabeth Stone in 1840, committed because her religious views differed from her family's, and end with actress Frances Farmer in 1943, committed by her mother to an institution where ice-cold baths and sadistic attendants were the order of the day, much as they had been 100 years before. Early accounts make clear how women were subject to the whims of fathers, husbands, and even brothers, with no legal or moral recourse. One author points out an Illinois law that permitted a man to ""put his wife into an Insane Asylum without evidence of insanity."" As society's views of women changed, so did the diagnoses that justified the asylum. ""Brain strain"" and ""nervous prostration"" were early favorites, when women were considered too frail to bear the burden of both domesticity and education. The forthright Phebe Davis, an inmate in a Utica, NY, asylum from 1850 to 1853, offers an eloquent commentary on such misguided thinking. St. Paul said a woman must not speak a loud word, she reports, but ""that was only his opinion and who cares for the opinion of one lovesick old bachelor, and he had been dead for centuries."" One carp: The editors have condensed the writings, but left no indication of where or how many cuts were made. Worthwhile if only for Phebe Davis's pungent observations, but also for framing historic patterns of abuse of the mentally ill.
Review: Women of the Asylum: Voices from Behind the Walls, 1840-1945
User Review - Karen Utter - GoodreadsThis book gives a history of mental illness dealing with women only; the history is divided into sections from 1840-1945, then gives first-hand accounts of several women who were admitted into various ... Read full review
Review: Women of the Asylum: Voices from Behind the Walls, 1840-1945
User Review - Stephanie - GoodreadsThis one had been sitting on my wishlist for a long time, and I finally got around to hunting down a secondhand copy. This book features excerpts from publications written by women who had been ... Read full review
Review: Women of the Asylum: Voices from Behind the Walls, 1840-1945
User Review - Amy - GoodreadsVery interesting- mainly a collection of primary documents, written by women after spending time in an asylum. A bit of commentary and context. These women wanted their accounts to be read; they were ... Read full review
Review: Women of the Asylum: Voices from Behind the Walls, 1840-1945
User Review - Kristine Pond - Goodreads1840 - 1945 1st person accounts Read full review
Review: Women of the Asylum
User Review - Conpanna - GoodreadsSimply put: this book provides examples of how/why women were labeled as mentally ill (institutions and unnecessary medical interventions). Read full review
Review: Women of the Asylum: Voices from Behind the Walls, 1840-1945
User Review - Carissa - GoodreadsI love first hand accounts of true events, especially if those events were somewhat tragic, and I especially love stories of women who have been considered insane, or been institutionalized in one ... Read full review
Review: Women of the Asylum: Voices from Behind the Walls, 1840-1945
User Review - Julie - GoodreadsThis book, with its real life narratives, was very difficult to read. It's frightening what women went through simply because of their gender. The book gives really good detail at what was going on in ... Read full review
Review: Women of the Asylum
User Review - GoodreadsFirst-person accounts from women labeled as "insane" in order to get rid of them, and the torture they were subjected to in the name of treatment. I want to read this scary stuff because they define courage.
Review: Women of the Asylum: Voices from Behind the Walls, 1840-1945
User Review - Erin - GoodreadsDidn't finish. Authors portions read like textbooks, hard to read and I skimmed. Some of the old time language hard to understand too. Just didn't hold my interest. Read full review
