Elaine Showalter Critical Essay | Critical Review by Melissa Benn

Critical Review by Melissa Benn

SOURCE: Benn, Melissa. “Out of Control?” New Statesman 126, no. 4338 (13 June 1997): 48.

In the following review of Hystories: Hysterical Epidemics and Modern Culture, Benn commends the “impressive clarity” of Showalter's discussion, but finds flaws in her presumptuous assertions about the nature of mysterious new afflictions.

It is rare for a book of cultural criticism to make so much real world trouble. But Elaine Showalter, professor of English at Princeton University and a television critic, has provoked outraged reactions in the US with [Hystories: Hysterical Epidemics and Modern Culture,] even to the point of death threats. A male friend and I bickered for hours over its central thesis. So why this hysteria about hysteria?

The problem is, in part, etymological. In common usage hysteria means making a fuss over nothing. Showalter returns it to its 19th-century meaning: the bodily expression of unspeakable distress. There is even a group...
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