Good and Mad Women: The Historical Construction of Femininity in Twentieth-Century Australia

by jill-julius-matthews

"Good and Mad Women" attempts to map the sociological patterns which have affected the lives of women in Australia over the past century. The author maintains that through the processes of the economy, ideology and social management, an ideal of the good woman was forged. But the ideal has been internally contradictory. "True" femininity is ultimately unattainable. The pathos of this failure for individual women is traced in the case notes of a group of women admitted to a psychiatric hospital between 1930 and 1975. But this is not a book about madness - rather, it is about ordinariness. As the author states, "Its purpose is to uncover the processes of becoming a woman in the 20th century so that, by understanding our historical construction as women, we may expand our possibilities and choose less inhibiting and destructive possibilities".

Genres: Gender

223 pages, Paperback

Published January 1, 1984

Reviews

[Abbey · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very much of its time but still valuable - works a bit like an Australian, historical version of Betty Friedan's 'The Feminine Mystique', but I far preferred this one for its groundedness in historical change and articulation of feminist theory. Still highly relevant and useful to at least think through some of these things, even if they don't necessarily hold true today. I hope something similar could be produced which situates the past twenty-thirty years against a longer past, to identify change.