Women's Issues
Apr 27, 2017
HISTORIC NOTE #1: "Hysteria" in its original sense was believed to be a medical condition affecting females and resulting from problems with their uterus. It was an "umbrella" term used to explain female behavior ranging from anxiety and depression to erotic fantasies and stubbornness. It was also used as a means to control women, explaining away their feelings as a medical problem and then locking them in an asylum to be "cured." The diagnosis was not "taken out of the books" until the 1950s!
It is doubtful that Marie believed she had "hysteria" or put much faith in such diagnoses, but it is true that she often used its terminology -- "nervous problems" and "female exhaustion" -- as a public explanation for the anxiety and depression she truly suffered.
HISTORIC NOTE #2: The image in Panel 2 is from a Women's Suffragist march in London (c. 1913) to protest the arrest of a fellow suffragette. I wanted to use something from the 1890s, but couldn't find anything suitable, and I found this particular photo to be striking. I already had the concept of zooming in on Mrs. Demarçay's eye, and then when I hit upon the dialogue "I see it," I realized she is a clairvoyant.
HISTORIC NOTE #2: All of the accomplishments mentioned in Panel 4 are actual. But I realized after my initial scripting that they all take place in "the future" (the story is currently set in early 1898). This made my realization about Mrs. Demarçay (fictional wife of real French chemist Eugène-Anatole Demarçay), her being a clairvoyant, quite convenient!
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