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From: reader Category: Art Date: 08 July 2009 Time: 07:54 AM Review: This is a brilliant book. It describes women’s relationships with their doctors, the changing fashions in how mental illness is described and makes the important point that for many women madness was a more desirable choice than the drudgery of their lives at home. The following passage describes the absurdity of what many women have to deal with in various forms on a daily basis, “it seems to be perfectly alright for a major South African politician to say that a woman’s short skirt sent him the message that she wanted sex – he is deemed neither mad, nor a rapist. But if in a similar instance a woman had said “His short trousers sent a message to me”, she might well be regarded as eccentric; said often enough in the early part of last century and accompanied by irritable behaviour the eccentricity might catapult into madness”.