Women Making Mischief: Modern France's Attempts to Decode Hysteria (2010)

Undergraduate: Olivia Blanchard

Faculty Advisor: Philippe Barr
Department: English

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Women’s marginalization in Western society has been a topic of intense interest in recent decades, as second-wave feminism has ushered into academia a plethora of woman-related topics to explore. However, although women’s studies departments may be new, the issues of gender-based submission/domination, power imbalance, and sexual tension that these departments are investigating have been a reality in many different cultures for millennia. One of the most striking and oldest manifestations of gender tension is hysteria, a concept that scholars now say dates back to as early as ancient Egypt. In examining the many different theories, solutions, and prescriptions that scholars and doctors have designed for hysteria, perhaps the only consistency is confusion. Although hysteria has intrigued French doctors and scholars, disrupted the French Catholic church, and helped define modern ideas about psychology, the one common thread throughout the centuries is the struggle to “fix” women who are somehow making life difficult for the men around them.