Lost Souls: Women, Religion and Mental Illness in the Victorian Asylum
Ebook
Overview
How did the Victorians view mental illness? After discovering the case-notes of women in Victorian asylums, Diana Peschier reveals how mental illness was recorded by both medical practitioners and in the popular literature of the era, and why madness became so closely associated with femininity. Her research reveals the plight of women incarcerated in 19th century asylums, how they became patients, and the ways they were perceived by their family, medical professionals, society and by themselves.
Tells the stories of women incarcerated in Victorian asylums, how they became patients, and the way they were perceived by their family, medical professionals, society and by themselves.
New perspective on Victorian mental health
Combines history with literature and religion
Diana Peschier is an established author
Chapter One: Introduction: The Sin of Eve and Dangerous Emotions
Chapter Two: Wives, Mothers and Abuse of Women in the Asylum
Chapter Three: Women with Religious Excitement
Chapter Four: Evangelical Sunday School Teaching: Lessons for Girls
Chapter Five: Physical Illness
Chapter Six: Asylums and Madness Mirrored in Nineteenth-Century Literature
Chapter Seven: Male Asylum Patients
Epilogue
Bibliography and Sources
The diverse texts Peschier examines in Lost Souls compose a rich, understudied resource that will continue to yield valuable insights into religion’s formative role in historical frameworks of cognitive difference in Western contexts and prehistories of what disability scholars and activists have called neurodiversity.
The book is testimony to the gendered nature of diagnosis and treatment in Victorian asylums and provides fascinating insights into the lives of the women discussed. It should inspire historians of family and community to investigate the lives of those women admitted to Victorian asylums, and provides context to their experiences.
This is a fascinating exposition of female madness and how it manifested itself in religious expression in the Victorian era. Peschier’s extensive research provides us with a unique insight into the gendered treatment of these beleaguered women.
- Title: Lost Souls: Women, Religion and Mental Illness in the Victorian Asylum
- Author: Diana Peschier
- Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
- Print Publication Date: 2019
- Logos Release Date: 2024
- Pages: 224
- Language: English
- Resources: 1
- Format: Digital › Ebook
- ISBNs: 9781786726544, 9781788318075, 1788318072, 1786726548
- Resource ID: LLS:9781786726544
- Resource Type: Monograph
- Metadata Last Updated: 2025-04-22T11:12:33Z
Diana Peschier holds a PhD from University of London. She is the author of Nineteenth-century Anti-Catholic Discourse: The Case of Charlotte Bronte (2005)