@inbook{6aeafe6047bb49eea1716e5e88881d0a,
title = "Consequential Madness: Gender and Power in Romantic-Period Madhouse Literature",
abstract = "This chapter discusses late-eighteenth- and early-nineteenth-century literary texts that depict the madhouse as a Gothic space in which individuals are pushed to the limits of what they can bear. In the language of William Battie{\textquoteright}s 1758 Treatise on Madness, it is “Consequential” rather than “Original” madness that is of interest in such works: disorders that occur in response to a trauma. This group of texts exploits the terrible irony of the potential for that external cause to be the madhouse itself. In doing so, they hit a cultural raw nerve centring on the unjust confinement of women and demonstrate how easily madness could be defined as behaviour that disrupted gendered hierarchies.",
keywords = "Madhouses, Gothic, Medical Humanities, Romantic-period literature",
author = "Russell, {Deborah Elizabeth}",
year = "2022",
month = sep,
day = "9",
language = "English",
isbn = "978-3-031-13362-6",
series = "Palgrave Studies in Literature, Science and Medicine",
publisher = "Palgrave",
editor = "Lucy Cogan and Michelle O'Connell",
booktitle = "Life, Death, and Consciousness in the Long Nineteenth Century",
}