"Hysteria, thy name is woman”: Pathologizing Femininity in Margaret Atwood’s Alias Grace

Abstract

Within the framework of Phallocentric discourse, women have historically been associated with illness and pathology. Hysteria, metaphorically and symbolically, has been constructed as a distinctly feminine condition and it continues to be gendered even into the modern epoch. Contextualizing the hindsight, Margaret Atwood’s Alias Grace addresses hysteria as a predominantly female malady, shedding light on its cultural and medical framework within societal constraints. The present paper critically examines the conceptualization of femininity and hysteria concerning culture, gender, and medicine. Through the lens of feminism, it explores hysteria as the subset of the broader cultural narrative that correlates women with madness focusing on the central character, Grace Marks, as an embodiment of Victorian female hysterical archetype.