This is a journey through a grim bit of history. It’s a Gothic, sapphic novel with a haunting mirror of modern-day society’s reactions to mental health and how medical establishments overlook or downplay women’s health issues.
Drenched in blood, Josephine arrives at the asylum without her memory and is
immediately branded with hysteria, which, at the time, was viewed as a common
female illness. Basically, any woman who didn’t conform to a man’s standard of
proper female behavior was diagnosed as being hysterical.
The asylum’s doctor is based on a real person who was considered the “father of
French neurology” and was famous for giving lectures where he would hypnotize
his patients and display their symptoms, almost like a circus act. In the book, he
turns Josephine into his star attraction and does just this.
Josephine’s caregiver is Laure, a former patient turned attendant, who tries to protect Josephine from the dangers of the asylum. The two fall into a forbidden,
desperate romance, a form of rebellion when everything else had been stripped from them. Their private moments together are the only times the two aren’t
performing, and by falling in love, they are essentially doubling down on their
madness in the eyes of the law. But choosing to love one another is the one thing
the doctors can’t control.
But this story didn’t come to hold your hand. Something terrifying starts to happen.
Josephine may be slipping into true insanity. The question becomes, did she always
carry a madness, or was it a natural reaction to the monsters who are treating her
Honestly, how much of our own sanity is a performance we put on to not get side-eyed or to pass as normal? How often have we been pushed to the brink by a world
that refuses to listen?
I’m a sucker for all historical fiction, and this was an excellent, fierce tangle of medical ethics, female exploitation, and the sheer grit of women who refused to
stay broken. It’s about the cost of defying a world that wants you quiet and sedated. There are twists, blackmail, and the ending does not disappoint.
This is easily one of my favorite books. The Madwomen of Paris is hauntingly
beautiful, unexpected, heartbreaking, and it is so beautifully written that I was
engrossed from beginning to end.
Please take care if you choose to read this; there is talk of suicide, rape, sexual
violence, and self-harm.
