The Mad Women's Ball by Victoria Mas
After they stopped burning us at the stake they put us in asylums. That was so much easier because the asylums were very legal yet not lethal for maybe years and by then who would know or remember you were even there? It was so easy, you see, to find yourself dropped off by a member of your family at the front steps of an asylum and never given another thought. It didn’t take much.
Since the 17th century women were “sorted,” as the author says. She tells us first came the poor, the beggars, then the depraved and prostitutes and then later the mad women, the hysterics and simpletons. For some, you only needed to have an opinion and speak it. Yet, for all its ease in dispensing with problem women family members the aristocracy didn’t use the service often because they didn’t want the stigma to follow them into the dinners and drawing rooms. Yet, it did happen.
This story takes place in 1885 Paris and Eugenie has been dropped off at the front door of the Hospital Salpetriere by her aristocratic father and reluctant brother. Her “crime?” She can see the dead and made the mistake of telling her trusted grandmother, who told her father and now here she is among the mad or otherwise and examined periodically by a room full of doctors who perform experiments on them in a thinly veiled attempt to cure them.
Eugenie immediately sees someone very near and dear to Beatrice, one of the nurses at the hospital and yes, it’s hard to believe someone who tells you a deceased loved one is in the room but Eugenie lets the dead speak for themselves and Beatrice has to decide whether to listen.
The Mad Women’s ball takes place once a year at the beginning of Lent. In the weeks leading up to it the patients are excited with the diversion planning how they would be dressed in gowns of their making or choosing and allowed to mingle with the aristocracy of Paris. The aristocracy is there to gawk. It’s quite the event no matter which side you are on.
I’m not going to tell you anymore about the story. I read this in two nights. I’m surprised it took that long.
That sounds interesting.
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