Reading Bodies
The Reading Bodies Research Network has met regularly since November 2023 to discuss our project research questions, updates on our chosen topics, and development of shared interests which are grouped into 3 themes: gender and the body; society, illness and representation; transnational and decolonial perspectives. For more information, please visit our Network and People pages.
By Danielle Hipkins, Professor of Italian Studies and Film, University of Exeter
Drawing connections with the AHRC-funded project A Girl’s Eye View 2021-2024, Prof. Danielle Hipkins reflects on audience responses to the genre of the ‘sick girl’ film.
The romantic film depends on the obstacle. Otherwise, what happens? Two people meet, fall in love, and live happily ever after. That is the outcome we want, but it’s not the story we want. It’s far too short, and likely boring.
Serious, terminal even, illness presents a narratively rich obstacle, and the canon of romantic films is strewn with lovers lost, slowly and painfully, or sometimes recovered through the sheer power of love alone. There are variations in outcome, and also in the distribution of illness: maybe he’s ill, maybe she’s ill, maybe they’re both ill. Sometimes they both survive, but usually it’s just one of them.
By Dr Olivia Glaze, AHRC Post-Doctoral Research Associate, University of Exeter
References to madness, insanity, melancholia, and hysteria have long plagued the diagnoses of female mental illness. The crazed, raving, and unstable woman is a prevalent trope that has long persisted within Western literature, from Ophelia in Shakespeare’s Hamlet (1599-1601) and Bertha Mason in Brontë’s Jane Eyre (1847) to Gilman’s The Yellow Wallpaper (1892) and Flaubert’s Madame Bovary (1856). Historically, madness, hysteria, and melancholia have been considered female afflictions due to an assumed inherent feminine proximity to wrecked nerves and sexual disorders – indeed, the word hysteria is derived from the Greek word “hysteron” or womb. In the late nineteenth century, understanding the ‘female’ illness of hysteria was a central focus of studies, led by the French neurologist Jean-Martin Charcot at his infamous Parisian asylum, Salpêtrière. Charcot transformed the hospital into an internationally renowned site of neurological teaching, with Sigmund Freud and Pierre Janet amongst his students.