“Except for This Hysteria, She Is the Perfect Woman”

Historical fiction can be understood as a hybrid space: it represents the past and simultaneously allows a consideration of the culture it is written in. Under the assumption that novels help address cultural shifts and attitudes, this paper aims to investigate how, why, and with what implications medical discourses surrounding women are depicted in fiction. This paper explores the manifold conceptualizations of hysteria in An Inconvenient Wife written by Megan Chance in 1998, arguing that the novel presents a complex view of discourses of medicalization. Its central claim is that the novel constructs hysteria not only as a tool of oppression but also as a tool with which to escape social constraints and patriarchal control. Through understanding historical fiction as not merely commenting on the past, but as addressing contemporary issues, the text adds to discussions centering on intersections of medicine and literature

Aesthetics · Art · Hysteria · Medicalization · Oppression · Political science · Politics · Psychoanalysis · Sociology · Wife · Gender Studies · Historical Psychiatry and Medical Practices · Historical Studies on Reproduction, Gender, Health, and Societal Changes · Law · Philosophy · Psychology · Short Stories in Global Literature

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  Open Access•Mark S Micale•History of Science•1989

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• Woman, medicine and abortion in the nineteenth century

  Open Access•Michael Thomson•Feminist Legal Studies•1995

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• Hostile and Benevolent Sexism

  Open Access•Paul Glick, Peter Glick et al.•Psychology of Women Quarterly•1997

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• The Female Figure in Contemporary Historical Fiction

  Open Access•Katherine Cooper, Emma Short•Female Figure in Contemporary…•2012

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• The Female Animal

  Carroll Smith-Rosenberg, Charles Rosenberg•Journal of American History•1973

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• The Race of Hysteria

  Open Access•Laura Briggs•American Quarterly•2000

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