[...] Showalter’s study argues that cultural notions about how women ought to conduct themselves have made women mad – a point of view I shared, though in a more nascent unspecified form. It was just a feeling really. As I read on this feeling soon began to deepen and darken emphatically and as it did so another feeling surged upwards with such force it winded me and that feeling was very distinct, it was outrage, it was outrage because it was obvious wasn’t it, so absolutely obvious, that if a person has no autonomy, no income, has so many restrictions imposed upon the course of their life and their daily round, is belittled, undermined, ignored, is misinterpreted on and on, is in the dark sexually, goes up to bed without knowing when or if their husband will come home, spends hours and hours and hours alone or with three children all under the age of six, of course they are going to go out of their mind. What are they supposed to do? Carry on cooking and cleaning day in day out and open their legs with a smile whenever it’s required, just as normal? Surely only an incapacitated sort of person with barely any of their faculties intact would be capable of putting up with conditions such as these. And there you have it. I didn’t finish reading The Female Malady. It was unbearable. It roused in me an inherent anger that was ancient and bloodthirsty. After having several extremely violent nightmares I returned it to Natasha and admitted I couldn’t finish it and she confessed to me that it had overwhelmed her also and she hadn’t been able to finish it either. [...]