Madness, Dance, Spectacle. Anomalies of Femininity in The Madwomen’s Ball in Salpêtrière by Gabriela Zapolska
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Abstracts
EN
This article focuses on the central motif of female madness in Gabriela Zapolska’s Madwomen’sBall in Salpêtrière from the year 1892. It aims to present the uniqueness of feminine perspective andthe way in which observations are recorded after the meeting with untypical heroines. The presentationof individual patients as well as the reality of the psychiatric hospital help to depict moral andethical issues connected with the incidents described in the text. The motifs of dance and madnessare seen as elements of female emancipation in Zapolska’s shocking essay and allow for presentingthe double discrimination of disordered women in the 19th century.