Books

The Mad Women's Ball examines feminism and hysteria

The Mad Women's Ball is a novel which examines feminism, madness and sexuality in the late 19th Century and keeps the reader questioning the cruelty of the era.

The day before I opened Victoria Mas’ debut novel, The Mad Women’s Ball, Britney Spears was telling a US judge how she had been stripped of her human rights after her breakdown. So I was already thinking about the way in which women’s trauma is used to subjugate them as I embarked on this tale of life in Paris’s Salpêtrière asylum.

It is a gothic, feminist book inspired by the strange goings-on in the mental hospital in the late 19th century, when neurologist Jean-Martin Charcot held sway. The female inmates – some of them committed for prostitution – were exhibited like circus freaks to an audience riveted by their afflictions. In public ‘lectures’, Charcot would hypnotise his chosen patient until she entered a state of abandonment close to sexual frenzy.

Books 1470
The Mad Women’s Ball by Victoria Mas, translated by Frank Wynne, is out now (Doubleday, £14.99) Image: Waterstone

The highlight of the year, for patients and public alike, was the masked ball at which the ‘mad’ women mingled with the Paris elite. It was a grotesque affair: a night of high excitement and humiliation. In their sumptuous costumes, the women felt glamorous, desired. But for the guests, the thrill was that of the voyeur, licensed to glimpse craziness at close quarters.

To these promising ingredients, Mas adds compelling characters: a nurse mourning the loss of her sister and a rebellious teenager whose only transgression is her ability to communicate with the dead. The Mad Women’s Ball is full of arresting tableaux: Geneviève the nurse, writing letters by lamplight; Thérèse, “the Tricoteuse”, her needles click-click-clicking through the mayhem. So cinematic is the novel it is already being turned into a film, directed by Mélanie Laurent of Inglourious Basterds fame.

Stylistically, it belongs to the Victorian era. Though written in French, it evokes the Brontës, with its dormitories, its phials and its ghosts. But thematically, it is bang up to date. The public appropriation of the Salpêtrière inmates’ ‘hysteria’ has contemporary echoes in the paparazzi shots of a shaven-headed Spears during her 2007 ‘meltdown’. Like Spears, arguably, many of the patients are pushed to the edges of sanity by the very forces that go on to declare them lacking in mental capacity.

Occasionally, Mas falls prey to the same fascination with ‘madness’ she sets out to critique. Mostly, though, she keeps the reader reflecting on the cruelties that put women in asylums (and conservatorships).

The Mad Women’s Ball by Victoria Mas, translated by Frank Wynne, is out now (Doubleday, £14.99)

Support the Big Issue

For over 30 years, the Big Issue has been committed to ending poverty in the UK. In 2024, our work is needed more than ever. Find out how you can support the Big Issue today.
Vendor martin Hawes

Recommended for you

View all
Headshot by Rita Bullwinkel review – a depth of feeling like a punch to the guts
Books

Headshot by Rita Bullwinkel review – a depth of feeling like a punch to the guts

Clear by Carys Davies review – a wonderful, poetic reminder that no man is an island
Books

Clear by Carys Davies review – a wonderful, poetic reminder that no man is an island

Top 5 books about early modern witchcraft, chosen by author Ramie Targoff
Books

Top 5 books about early modern witchcraft, chosen by author Ramie Targoff

Why walking is such a great way to see, sense and stake a claim in the world
Books

Why walking is such a great way to see, sense and stake a claim in the world

Most Popular

Read All
Renters pay their landlords' buy-to-let mortgages, so they should get a share of the profits
Renters: A mortgage lender's window advertising buy-to-let products
1.

Renters pay their landlords' buy-to-let mortgages, so they should get a share of the profits

Exclusive: Disabled people are 'set up to fail' by the DWP in target-driven disability benefits system, whistleblowers reveal
Pound coins on a piece of paper with disability living allowancve
2.

Exclusive: Disabled people are 'set up to fail' by the DWP in target-driven disability benefits system, whistleblowers reveal

Here's when UK households to start receiving last cost of living payments
next dwp cost of living payment 2023
3.

Here's when UK households to start receiving last cost of living payments

Strike dates 2023: From train drivers to NHS doctors, here are the dates to know
4.

Strike dates 2023: From train drivers to NHS doctors, here are the dates to know