“….in proving that insanity is more prevalent among women than among men.” Charles Dickens

Wrapping more Items I sold: check out my store, there may be something you can’t live w/o: https://www.etsy.com/shop/DragonLaire?ref=hdr_shop_menu How’s it going with you? Spent the evening reading and planning more of my trip. Rainy and ugly here today. Honorable mention Mt. Dora Again: ASHLEY’S FLAG AND SPORT SHOPPE https://www.facebook.com/AshleysCornerMtDora

“Bertha is the embodiment of the monstrous lunatic who requires restraint,” says historian of madness, Catherine Arnold. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/8622367.stm

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Cait and Sam take a break from Claire and Jamie.

Check out who Sam wants to play Jamie’s daughter: http://www.inquisitr.com/2447404/outlander-star-sam-heughan-wants-a-certain-game-of-thrones-star-to-play-briana-fraser/

Some other cast members away from Scotland

“Dispute not with her: she is lunatic.”
― William Shakespeare, Richard III

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I thought today we’d examine the MAD WOMAN (Dickens wrote the title quote while attending a Christmas Celebration at one of London’s mental institution.)

The Victorian age, which was one of reforms and improvements to how the mad were viewed as well as the institutions and yet their treatment was still barbaric by our standards. The cause of madness was still unknown and so like Charlotte Bronte’s mad wife Mrs. Rochester who escapes from her attic prison and sets a fire that changes everything, the mad woman as a force of nature–or an avenging spirit. If you would like to see the mad woman’s story try READING: The Wide Sargasso Sea http://www.amazon.com/Wide-Sargasso-Sea-A-Novel/dp/0393308804 or watching: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zNoncujS6wc When Bronte’s treatment of the mad wife as pretty much the villain; thus favoring the man who locked her away and become involved with Jane; was questioned she apologized–after all she had a sibling–a brother, who was affected with psychological issues and actually set a bed afire.

‘It is true that profound pity ought to be the only sentiment elicited by the view of such degradation,’ Charlotte Bronte

Of Course the further back the worse the mad woman becomes. Shakespeare has a few mad women:

Lady Macbeth: Infirm of purpose!
Give me the daggers. The sleeping and the dead
Are but as pictures; ’tis the eye of childhood
That fears a painted devil.

I’m not at all sure that Lady Macbeth (The real Lady Macbeth’s first name was Gruoch, although this is not mentioned in the play and he was her second husband. http://www.william-shakespeare.info/shakespeare-play-macbeth.htm) was actually insane, but rather a corporate raider meets Mafia Don— type that didn’t fit in with the Elizabethan’s woman’s proper place. And since it was so unwomanly she therefore must be mad.

Ophelia: But Yet I do believe
The origin and commencement of this grief
Sprung from neglected love

Charney Maurice suggests that since within Renaissance drama madwomen were ‘more strongly defined than madmen’, and women’s madness was ‘interpreted as something specifically feminine’ http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/8622367.stm

Which makes sense in an age when women were less privileged and less important than their male counter-part and so madness or at least behavior non-becoming her feminine role would be closely looked at and defined as a madness. I could imagine a woman pushed beyond her tolerance of a situation using such behavior just to escape her burdens in life. Not saying it happened but think about yourself and that situation.

No doubt exists that all women are crazy; it’s only a question of degree. W. C. Fields

Then there’s the more current heroine: Blanche DuBois (Truman Capote)

Blanche: They told me to take a streetcar named ‘Desire’,transfer to one called ‘Cemetery’,ride six blocks and get off,at Elysian Fields.

Here we have a woman who is a victim, a bit delusional to say the least and who unannounced appears at her sister and her brutal brother-in law’s apartment and basically moves in —the husband’s rape seals Blanche’s final descent (and in this southern belle’s case it’s not a long trip) and eventually being convinced that she is being taken to meet an old lover she is last seen being taken to e asylum that is her true destination. Is this a more convincing story of insanity for an unstable woman due to trauma? In this case not only rape, but by her own sister’s husband. Yet somehow I feel that it still bears some old taint of the unstable woman (and again at the male stressor) which shows that maybe we are all weak and prone to insanity at male stressors somewhere along the line— but the author Capote just didn’t want to say it too obviously.

There is a great reform required in the education and habits of females.

Ezra Cornell

In the 19th century:

Women’s health issues were also seemingly neglected under a catch all of lunacy. ‘Imaginary female trouble’, ‘suppression of menses’ – which could be the case of being pregnant out of wedlock, or caused by an eating disorder or other illness – and hysteria.

The weaker sex, as women were defined at the time the asylum first opened, also meant a strong attitude could land them in trouble, with ‘nymphomania’ and ‘seduction and disappointment’ reasons for admission. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2413131/Immorality-post-traumatic-stress-Reasons-patients-admitted-lunatic-asylum-1800s.html#ixzz3n9MJNgYT

So just about anything female could get you committed—starts to make our characters a bit more sane doesn’t it.

Women are made to be loved, not understood.

Oscar Wilde

And if can’t commit them there’s always burning— as let face it wasn’t it those 3 women who caused Macbeth’s problems.

Fair is foul, and foul is fair;
Hover through the fog and filthy air. ALL THREE WITCHES/MACBETH

In the past, men created witches: now they create mental patients.

Thomas Szasz

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Norma Desmond: [to newsreel camera] And I promise you I’ll never desert you again because after ‘Salome’ we’ll make another picture and another picture. You see, this is my life! It always will be! Nothing else! Just us, the cameras, and those wonderful people out there in the dark!… All right, Mr. DeMille, I’m ready for my close-up. (Sunset Blvd.)