This exhibit explores the experience and treatment of women's mental illness in the 19th century. Medical papers and official manuscripts offer insight into the broader culture at the time, while writings by Charlotte Perkins Gilman and Kate Chopin seek to illustrate the counterculture of strong female voices. This exhibit seeks to show two experiences: women whose real illness was ignored, such as Gilman and other victims of the rest cure, and women whose illness was invented as a form of abuse, documented by women such as Lydia B. Denny. Furthermore, I hope to illustrate the ways in which these practices were ingrained into the culture, only to be challenged by women such as Gilman and Chopin who had the ability to fight back.
