La histerización de la mujer intelectual decimonónica

Résumé

In the mid-nineteenth century, hysteria became one of the most famous disorders, and was always associated with women, as well as with the power it had to relegate them to domestic roles. In a time marked by the development of liberal professions and by the introduction a varied student body to the western universities, women were still relegated to their domestic tasks. During a changing era in which patriarchy can be threatened by intellectual women with academic ambitions, scientists and politicians found in the hysteria diagnosis the perfect weapon against all women who would rebel, demand their rights and who would want the access to higher education in Europe and the United States. Thus, they are discouraged from attending university, since intellectual development could impactfully harm the female physiognomy, too weak to withstand the weight of mental work. Intellectuality, according to doctors, would be a direct route to infertility, weakness, neurosis and, with it, to hysteria