Article ID: CBB001422233

Women Working “Amidst the Mad”: Domesticity as Psychiatric Treatment in Nineteenth-Century Paris (2015)

unapi

This article examines the role of women in the direction of private mental institutions owned by the Brierre de Boismont family in nineteenth-century Paris, arguing that the cultural elevation of domesticity sanctioned the participation of Athalie Brierre de Boismont and her daughter, Marie Rivet, in asylum operations despite proscriptions against elite women's labor. Alexandre Brierre de Boismont and his family lived alongside their patients and integrated them into the household routine in hopes that this would encourage those deemed insane to return to rationality. As exemplars of ideal womanhood, the Brierre de Boismont women were central to the enactment of the treatment process. While their activities in the family's asylums often perpetuated gender values that naturalized the division of the public and private spheres, they also called attention to the artificiality of such beliefs by performing domesticity in an environment so unlike the typical bourgeois home.

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Citation URI
https://data.isiscb.org/isis/citation/CBB001422233/

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Authors & Contributors
Silvano, Giovanni
Valeriano, Annacarla
Peschier, Diana
Azara, Liliosa
Maria Isabel Romero Ruiz
Campbell, Morag Allan
Concepts
Psychiatric hospitals
Psychiatry
Mental disorders and diseases
Medicine and gender
Medicine
Women
Time Periods
19th century
20th century, early
20th century
18th century
20th century, late
Places
Italy
France
Paris (France)
Great Britain
Australia
England
Institutions
Salpêtrière, Paris
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