the nameless wife’s desire was an emotional rebellion against the rigid social order. She dreamed of a life in which she was more than property and a womb, a life in which she had erotic agency that reached across stringent class divides and defied the constraints of what was likely a less than satisfactory marriage. Galen’s diagnosis took none of this into account. It reduced all her feeling, and its social context, into an illness to be cured.
