• Out of his mind
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Out of his mind

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In a society that defined manhood as a mastery of self-control, the madman stood as a horrifying example of what could go wrong. Out of His Mind is a socio-cultural study of the madman in Victorian...
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  • 28 May 2024
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Out of His Mind interrogates how Victorians made sense of the madman as both a social reality and a cultural representation. Even at the height of enthusiasm for the curative powers of nineteenth-century psychiatry, to be certified as a lunatic meant a loss of one’s freedom and in many ways one’s identify. Because men had the most power and authority in Victorian Britain, this also meant they had the most to lose. The madman was often a marginal figure, confined in private homes, hospitals, and asylums. Yet as a cultural phenomenon he loomed large, tapping into broader social anxieties about respectability, masculine self-control, and fears of degeneration. Using a wealth of case notes, press accounts, literature, medical and government reports, this text provides a rich window into public understandings and personal experiences of men’s insanity.
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Price: £25.00
Pages: 328
Publisher: Manchester University Press
Imprint: Manchester University Press
Series: Gender in History
Publication Date: 28 May 2024
ISBN: 9781526178855
Format: Paperback
BISACs:

HISTORY / Modern / 19th Century, History and Archaeology, HISTORY / Social History, MEDICAL / Mental Health, Social and cultural history, Care of people with mental health issues
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'An original contribution to our understanding of how gender, and especially masculinity, impacted the experience and representation of madness in Victorian Britain.'
Katie Barclay, The American Historical Review

'Out of His Mind evidences a cultural fascination with madmen that tapped into anxieties about men who deviated from respectable models of Victorian masculinity. This book convincingly shows that madness operated as normative masculinity's foil.'
Journal of British Studies

'Out of His Mind builds upon and strengthens work already done in the history of science to destabilise gendered notions of scientific and medical authority.'
Heather Ellis, Women's History Review

'Amy Milne-Smith makes an important contribution to historical understandings of the multi-dimensional interactions between gender and mental health, encompassing the medical, social, attitudinal and cultural.'
Leonard Smith, Cultural and Social History

'Out of His Mind contributes to the recent, growing scholarship on the history of disability and mental health... Milne-Smith’s range of sources make this work a compelling read.'
H-Disability

Introduction: Madmen in the attic?
1 Men in care: the asylum
2 Men in the community: homecare, doctor’s care, and travellers
3 Personal shame: failures of morality and the will
4 Madmen out of the attic: reputation, rage, and liberty
5 Media panics: stories of violence, danger, and men out of control
6 Degeneration and madness: inheritance, neurasthenia, criminals, and GPI
Epilogue