Walls Without Windows: Hysteria, Sexual Repression and the Feminine Psyche

This article studies the depiction of psychosexual health in literary accounts through a critical analysis of three seminal texts: Jane Eyre, The Yellow Wallpaper and The Treatment of Bibi Haldar from Interpreter of Maladies. It traces the thematic development of feminine “madness” in these works and examines how madness is historically ingrained in unacknowledged sexual dissatisfaction and universal medicinal negligence. Rooted in historical accounts of 18th to 19th-century gynecological practices, predominantly the practice of genital massage by physicians as an ostensible cure for “hysteria.” This article aims to highlight how psychosexual anguish was both misinterpreted and altered through a gendered medical purview. The study further questions the structure of a patriarchal chronicle that pathologized female sexuality, associating emotional countenance and carnal desires with cerebral volatility. In contrast, masculine emotional restraint was valorized as rationality, emphasizing on the binary oppositions in emotive and sensual comportment. By aligning these texts within the broader psychosexual discourse of sexual medicine, psychiatry, and gendered storytelling, this article accentuates the necessity to revisit historical attitudes toward women’s sexual well-being and redefine the limits of psychosexual wellness in modern medical practice. Such analysis aligns with the study of psychosexual health to integrate medical, psychological, and cultural viewpoints on sexuality, offering a critical reflection on the historical reinforcements that continue to shape modern understandings of gendered sexual health.