Women Driven Mad

This book offers an in-depth analysis as to how and why women have been widelyassociated with madness since ancient times. The first part of the book comprises ahistorical survey of various perceptions of madness across the centuries, while thesecond part of the book covers a wide selection of literary works by American andEnglish writers who dealt with this subject in their works. In this part of the book,the authors examine selected works of literature from a feminist perspective byalso drawing on the works of influential theorists of feminist criticism. The authorsfurther show how these writers, who have been influenced by various philosophersand theoreticians, critically examine women's madness in their fiction.