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by Amy Milne-Smith (Author)
Out of His Mind interrogates how Victorians made sense of the madman as both a social reality and a cultural representation. Even at the height of enthusiasm for the curative powers of nineteenth-century psychiatry, to be certified as a lunatic meant a loss of one's freedom and in many ways one's identify. Because men had the most power and authority in Victorian Britain, this also meant they had the most to lose. The madman was often a marginal figure, confined in private homes, hospitals, and asylums. Yet as a cultural phenomenon he loomed large, tapping into broader social anxieties about respectability, masculine self-control, and fears of degeneration. Using a wealth of case notes, press accounts, literature, medical and government reports, this text provides a rich window into public understandings and personal experiences of men's insanity.
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Out of his mind is a study of the consequences of a diagnosis of insanity for men, their families, their friends, and the culture at large.
Studying the madman allows for an exploration of the cultural expectations of male behaviour, how men responded to those norms in their lived experiences, and what defined the bare minimums of acceptable male behaviour. Men's authority in society was rooted in control over dependents within their household and beyond; without that power, the foundation of their manhood was in question. As such, madness touched on a key tenet of nineteenth century masculinity: control. Building on accounts by sufferers, doctors, government officials, journalists and novelists, Out of his mind offers insight in the shifting anxieties surrounding men in mental distress. Exploring everything from wrongful confinement panics to cultures of shame and stigma to fears of degeneration, this study makes an important contribution to histories of gender and medicine. This text puts the madman at the centre of the history of Victorian masculinity and helps to better understand the stigma of men's mental illness that continues to this day.Author Biography
Amy Milne-Smith is Professor of History at Wilfrid Laurier University
