SOURCE: "Invalids and Nurses: The Sisterhood of Rage," in Passions of the Voice: Hysteria, Narrative, and the Figure of the Speaking Woman, 1850-1915, The John Hopkins University Press, 1995, pp. 34-63.

In the excerpt that follows, Kahane examines several major works of literature to reveal the structure of hysteria as an aggressive act of self-expression.

Hysteria is the daughter's disease.

—Juliet Mitchell

Daughter of the father? Or daughter of the mother?

—Julia Kristeva

In reading Freud's case history of Dora for its illumination of hysterical narrative voice, I have explored Freud's desire more than Dora's, his symptomatic use of language more than hers. Yet, as Juliet Mitchell remarks, hysteria has been particularly the daughter's disease.¹ What does it mean to be a daughter in the narrative of psychoanalysis? Why is it so problematic? Freud's initial answer was that the daughter signifies the oedipal child who not only desires the...