SOURCE: "History/Hysteria: A Glance Backward," in Passions of the Voice: Hysteria, Narrative, and the Figure of the Speaking Woman, 1850-1915, The John Hopkins University Press, 1995, pp. 1-13.

In the excerpt that follows, Kahane contends that the second half of the nineteenth century was dominated by cultural, political, and economic upheaval, accompanied by a conservative reaction to this upheaval; this tension between radical change and static order, Kahane maintains, is reflected in the structure of the internal conflict expressed in hysteria.

Wherever the hysteric goes, she brings war with her.

—Moustapha Safouan, "In Praise of Hysteria"

Change is the matter both of history and of narrative, but as historians have remarked, England in the second half of the nineteenth century seemed to experience its mutability with extraordinary intensity. The sense of cultural transformation that dominated both event and discourse in the Victorian era has been repeatedly chronicled; within...