Introduction

Across history, men’s priority has been maintaining their grip on women – their status, bodies, and minds. The methods have shifted and the intensity has varied, but the reality remains the same. Systems of power favor men and decenter women, confining them to boxes of fragility and submissiveness to uphold patriarchal dominance. A woman’s femininity is weaponized – her biology is tainted and transformed into something sinful. Her emotions are “too much”; her suffering is downplayed; her desires are shameful. In a modern 21st century setting, these narratives still exist, though not in a vacuum. They have been institutionalized and legitimized through law, medicine, and science.

When women are trapped solely in the private sphere and occupied with motherhood and housework, men are left to take charge of the public sphere and fields such as law, medicine, psychiatry – to name a few.  Hence, it is not surprising to discover the lengths through which these men went to consolidate their control over women and punish those who deviate. When law, medicine, and psychiatry are authored through a male lens, women are pathologized and systematically disadvantaged. When men write the law, women are denied the right to vote. When men define psychiatry, female psychology is reduced to ‘penis envy’. When men dominate medicine, women’s pain is dismissed as hysteria.

Etymology and History of Hysteria

“Hysteria” is an expression still thrown around in contemporary pop culture and on social media, though its history is unfamiliar to most. This term comes from the Greek word ‘hystera’, which translates to ‘uterus’ (Bailey, 1996; 332[MS1] ). The Greek physician Hippocrates was the first to use the term in his explanation of the disorder, which is caused by the ‘bad uterus’ and its sudden movements in the body. The uterus’ wet and cold nature-as opposed to the warmth and dryness of the male body – produces toxic fumes in the body and causes anxiety, sense of suffocation, and paralysis. He emphasized sex as being the cure to hysteria, though only within the institution of marriage (Tesca et al, 2012; 111).

It was widely accepted that hysteria was a female disease linked to the uterus and cured by male intervention (Tesca et al, 2012; 114). Hippocrates’ statements were later affirmed by Plato and other Greek figures (Tesca et al, 2012; 111). In fact, the idea of sex as a cure precedes Hippocrates and is rooted in the legend of Argonaut Melampus, who cured Argos’ hysterical virgins by encouraging them to have sex with strong men (Tesca et al, 2012; 110). Essentially, this myth gave birth to the idea of sexual activity (or lack thereof) as a factor contributing to hysteria. This would haunt women’s fight towards autonomy for centuries to come.

 A modern reading of history, mythology, and medicinal archives allows us to conclude that hysteria was simply another tool used by the patriarchal system to dismiss women who deviated from the norm. The study of their biology and potential remedies was done from a perspective advantageous to men. Moreover, in the 18th century, the link between the uterus and hysteria became less credible, and theories studying the link between hysteria and the brain were accepted (Tesca et al, 2012; 114). Although this implied that men can also have hysteria, physicians of the time continued treating it as a female malady due to women’s perceived emotional fragility and weakness (Cohut, 2020). Characteristics of hysteria were broad-ranged, suggesting that women can be diagnosed as hysterical for the slightest actions. Anxiety, fatigue, muscular spasms, lack of or excess of sexual desire, irritability, and unusual behaviors were all considered symptoms (Cohut, 2020).

The convenience of a hysteria diagnosis made it dangerously easy to discredit women in the legal system and strip them of autonomy. A woman labeled hysterical could not be trusted to make her own choices. Her words were dismissed and her pleas unheard.

Legally Insane Without Proof: Women’s Struggle Against a Loose Legal System

In 1860s Illinois (like in many other states), it was legal for a husband to admit his wife to an insane asylum with minimal evidence (Wheeler, 2021[MS2] ). While men were entitled to a due process to determine their sanity, married women were denied that right (Brandman, 2021). Such was the case of Elizabeth Packard, an avid advocate for the rights of married women and the mentally ill. At the age of 19, after suffering from a high fever and severe headaches, she was admitted to an asylum by her father and subjected to purging and bleeding tactics, which were thought to cure her disease (Brandman, 2021). Later, after marrying Calvinist minister Theophilus Packard Jr., she was readmitted, with minimal proof, to an asylum based on accusations of mental instability (Brandman, 2021). Her so-called “insanity” stemmed not from legitimately worrisome behavior, but from her rejection of submissive womanhood: she was engaged in missionary work, challenged her husband’s theological views, and tried moving away from traditional femininity (Wheeler, 2021). 

Packard fought back against the system which had her locked up without consent and made it her life’s work to ensure no woman suffers the same fate (Wheeler, 2021; Brandman, 2021). Her resistance was twisted into further “evidence” of her madness. 42 months later she was labelled ‘incurably insane’ and released. Her husband then attempted to commit her for life in a Massachusetts asylum. Only with the help of close friends did she manage to appear before a court. After just seven minutes of deliberation, the judge declared her perfectly sane (Wheeler, 2021).

   Elizabeth’s struggle was momentarily terminated. She was free, and her ‘legal sanity’ was restored, though she was penniless and homeless – a courtesy of property laws in the 1800s (Wheeler, 2021). Her sanity may have been legally restored, but her rights as a woman remained fractured. The same fate was suffered by English women in the Victorian era, who were disproportionately affected by the country’s lunacy laws. The latter was a system which detained and treated lunatics in asylum houses supervised by the County authorities. A Lunacy Commission was in charge of assessing individuals’ sanity and monitoring madhouses (Anthony, 2021). “Unfeminine” behavior was punished by a diagnosis, facilitated by the money-hungry Lunacy Commission (Reid, 2004; 253)

Louisa Lowe’s The Bastilles of England documented the cruelty and injustice carried out in England’s asylums. She exposed the Lunacy Commissioners, namely one Robert Lutwidge who “advised her to keep quiet” after she tried explaining the reality of her situation (Anthony, 2021). Lowe revealed how ‘camaraderie and mutual loyalty’ between the male elite contributed to the capture and diagnosis of many women, including herself (Reid, 2004; 252). Her lunacy certificates cited her husband’s accusations and included spiritualism as proof of her insanity, clearly failing to – or refraining from – accurately assessing her (Reid, 2004; 251). Lowe did suffer from nervous troubles, but none of it amounted to legal insanity. In her own words, “something terrible” had happened on their wedding night which perpetually unnerved her. Her trauma was compounded by the knowledge that her husband was having an affair with their servant, the devastating loss of four of their eight children in infancy, and the abuse of their seven-year-old daughter at the hands of her husband (Anthony, 2021). Louisa’s exhibited behavior was not a sign of madness but a reasonable response to prolonged grief and violence; experiences that would unnerve anyone.

Like Packard, Louisa fought long and hard against the system. She sought to reform the inherently sexist and overall poor lunacy laws, pointing out that most of the women were admitted not out of genuine medical concern, but rather as a means of control and subjugation (Anthony, 2021). Louisa’s advocacy was meant to challenge the loose legal criteria for insanity, specifically when it comes to women. Simple gestures of autonomy were enough to get a woman shackled up in an asylum somewhere.

The Struggle Continues

         The legal system was built without making space for women. In the 19th and early 20th centuries, being declared mentally incompetent often required little more than the word of a husband or male physician. Even when women were granted a courtroom hearing, the process was far more grueling and biased than it was for men, with a low chance of success. However, even today, the structural prejudice remains. A woman can be a victim, but even her victimhood is defined and conditioned by the patriarchy (Tompalski & Romanik, 2019; 34). Women’s testimonies are often subjected to ‘maliciously intended narratives’ aiming to discredit their experiences (Kremidas-Courtney, 2023). Gender-blind courts remain the norm, posing serious risks; particularly in custody battles, where mothers are often pathologized by violent fathers who weaponize exaggerated claims of instability (Zaccour, 2018, p. 102). These accusations are rarely met with punishment, reinforcing a legal culture that silences women, normalizes the hysterical trope, and enables abuse.

         In a patriarchal society, any woman can be ‘crazy’. The medicalization of hysteria, and the legal processes which enabled it, was a way of controlling women who refused the norms of male-instituted femininity (Tompalski & Romanik, 2019; 33-5). Those who need help seldom receive it. In the 19th century, so-called “treatment” for hysterical women often involved forced isolation, excessive bedrest, and strict bans on intellectual or physical activity; measures that silenced rather than healed (Cohut, 2020). Today, the pattern persists: women who exhibit signs of distress or nervous disorders are frequently overmedicalized, their symptoms reduced to biological quirks instead of contextualized within their lived realities (Tompalski & Romanik, 2019; 35-7). These methods serve to silence rather than heal, and are advantageous only to the men who institute them. Why question the structural factors of a woman’s deteriorating mental health, such as trauma and inequality, when it’s easier to medicate the problem?

        More could and should be done. Women who fought vigilantly for the dismantlement of sexist legal and medical systems, from Lowe to Packard, must be honored. True progress requires more than reform: it demands that we confront the gendered values deeply embedded in our societies and institutions. Women’s voices are credible and rational; they deserve justice, equality, and integration – only then could we begin to think of our world as a modern one.