Complaints & Disorders by Barbara Ehrenreich

Author:Barbara Ehrenreich
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: The Feminist Press at CUNY
Published: 2011-06-05T16:00:00+00:00

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If some women resorted to sickness as a means of birth—and sex—control, others undoubtedly used it to gain attention and a limited measure of power within their families. Today, everybody is familiar with the (sexist) myth of the mother-in-law whose symptoms conveniently strike during family crises. In the nineteenth century, women developed, in epidemic numbers, an entire syndrome which even doctors sometimes interpreted as a power grab rather than a genuine illness. The new disease was hysteria, which in many ways epitomized the cult of female invalidism. It affected upper- and upper-middle-class women almost exclusively; it has no discernible organic basis; and it was totally resistant to medical treatment. For those reasons alone, it is worth considering in some detail.

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