Graduate Studies

 

First Advisor

Melissa Homestead

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.)

Department

English

Date of this Version

8-2024

Document Type

Dissertation

Citation

A dissertation presented to the faculty of the Graduate College of the University of Nebraska in partial fulfillment of requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy

Major: English (Literary and Cultural Studies) (Women’s and Gender Studies)

Under the supervision of Professor Melissa Homestead

Lincoln, Nebraska, August 2024

Comments

Copyright 2024, Jaclyn Marie Swiderski. Used by permission

Abstract

This dissertation focuses on the long history of hysteria and the ways in which it has been used to denigrate and silence disabled women. Women diagnosed as hysterical, by either the medical establishment or the court of public opinion, are denied the right to generate knowledge about and for themselves – they are epistemologically disabled. The author argues that hysterical women have unique ways of looking at and understanding the world which push back against their epistemological disablement. In order to uncover some of this history of hysterical women, this dissertation uses the diaries of four “hysterical” women over the course of the mid-nineteenth to mid-twentieth century, those of George Eliot, Charlotte Forten Grimke, Virginia Woolf, and Sylvia Plath. Each chapter analyzes one of these women’s unique criphystemologies, or how they understood the world as a disabled woman. Ultimately, the author argues that the blatant discrimination that women experience in doctor’s offices around the world today is inherently tied to the historical experience of hysteria, and that strategies for coping and survival can be found in these historical women’s life writing.

Advisor: Melissa Homestead

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