Women and madness in SF

• Some notes on the topic; need to be fleshed out; what else is missing?

Gendered uses of madness

Women characters particularly prone to be "mad"? Use of madness to punish female social/sexual transgression?

Feminine madness versus masculine madness: obsession (e.g., Shelley's Dr. Frankenstein) treated almost as not madness at all, but a drive; murderous rage similarly treated as temporary, not a mental illness. Men's madness is strengthening; women's madness weakens them, languishing (relationship to multiple representations of women dying of tuberculosis, a disease which in literature shows a strange affinity for young attractive female characters). But see Heroes/Niki; Millennium/Frank Black & Lara Means; X-Files/Mulder). Is madness for Niki weakness? Social punishment for an out-of-control / strong female character? Can she integrate?

How much is madness a reasonable response to unreasonable conditions? e.g., Yellow Wallpaper; Friedan / Feminine Mystique. Patriarchy as literally maddening.

SF and other art forms

SF as always offers opportunities to explore different forms of madness and different social treatments for madness. (See Piercy/WOTEOT.)

Madness long history in non-SF and para-SF genres; see, e.g., Lucia Lammermoor (opera); Brontë's Jane Eyre (early gothic / romance) and feminist re-take on madness told from Rochester's wife's perspective (Jean Rhys Wide Sargasso Sea). Madness haunts gothic literature from Jane Eyre onward; Yellow Wallpaper in partial response to that.

List of works

• Lois McMaster Bujold - The Curse of Chalion and Paladin of Souls
• Charlotte Perkins Gilman - "The Yellow Wallpaper"
• Gwyneth Jones - Life - A major character has a mental / nervous breakdown for some weeks.
• Justine Larbalestier - "Magic or Madness Trilogy" - A major character has a mental breakdown; madness hangs over many characters.
• Norma Marden - An Eye for Dark Places (1993)
• Marge Piercy - Woman on the Edge of Time (in "utopian" future society it is discussed that one character had a breakdown; mental breakdowns are not treated negatively. This is in contrast with treatment of protagonist in modern-day US society, where diagnosis is affected by racism and sexism, and treatment is inhumane and stigmatizing.)
• Raccoona Sheldon - "Your Faces, O My Sisters! Your Faces Filled of Light!"
• Sarah Waters - Affinity
• Ophelia / Shakespeare
• "Millennium (TV series)" episode; see Lara Means; see also Frank Black as comparatively rare example of male protagonist experiencing madness or insanity
• Heroes (TV series) - character Niki Sanders in season 1

suggestions & possibilities

• "A Very Little Madness Goes a Long Way" by M. Rickert

See also

• Feminist rage