She then tells the reader how, while struggling through the birth of her first child, she developed what we would today describe as post-partum psychosis.11 She records her experiences in the third person as a way of indicating she is narrating past events objectively. Margery says she ‘went out of her mind and was bewilderingly vexed and troubled by spirits for half a year, eight weeks and odd days’. She was so affected by the hallucinations it brought about that she had to be restrained day and night. She describes being attacked by demons, and throughout her Book Margery constantly fears
...more