Genre Fiction
![Jennifer Cody Epstein - [object Object] author](https://res.cloudinary.com/readsomnia/image/upload/authors/a_B001JS043K.jpg)
The Madwomen of Paris: A Novel
Two women fall under the influence of a powerful doctor in Paris's notorious women's asylum in this gripping historical novel inspired by true events, from the bestselling author of Wunderland.
"Beautifully crafted . . . Combining elegant prose, artfully chosen historical details, and convincing characterizations, this haunting narrative showcases Epstein at her best."-Publishers Weekly (starred review)
When Josephine arrives at the Salpêtrière asylum, she is covered in blood, badly bruised, and suffering from amnesia. She is quickly diagnosed with what the Paris papers are calling "the epidemic of the age": hysteria, a disease is so baffling and widespread that Doctor Jean-Martin Charcot, the asylum's famous director, devotes many of his popular public lectures to the malady. Charcot often uses hypnosis to prompt his patients to reproduce their hysterical symptoms, and to his delight, Josephine proves extraordinarily susceptible to this unconscious manipulation. He is soon featuring the young woman on his stage, entrancing her into fantastical acts and hallucinatory fits before enraptured audiences and eager newsmen-many of whom feature her on their papers' front pages.
Laure, a ward attendant assigned to care for Charcot's new favorite, knows that Josephine's diagnosis is a godsend. Life in the Salpêtrière's Hysteria ward is far easier than in its dreaded Lunacy division, from which few inmates ever return. But as Josephine's fame grows, her memory starts to return-and with it, images of a terrible crime she's convinced she's committed. Haunted by these visions, and ensnared in Charcot's hypnotic web, she starts spiraling into seeming insanity. Desperate to save the girl she has grown to love, Laure begins to plot their escape from the Salpêtrière and its doctors. First, though, she must confirm whether Josephine is truly a madwoman, doomed to die in the asylum-or a murderer, destined for the guillotine.
Both are dark possibilities-but not nearly as dark as what Laure unearths when she sets out to discover the truth.
"Beautifully crafted . . . Combining elegant prose, artfully chosen historical details, and convincing characterizations, this haunting narrative showcases Epstein at her best."-Publishers Weekly (starred review)
When Josephine arrives at the Salpêtrière asylum, she is covered in blood, badly bruised, and suffering from amnesia. She is quickly diagnosed with what the Paris papers are calling "the epidemic of the age": hysteria, a disease is so baffling and widespread that Doctor Jean-Martin Charcot, the asylum's famous director, devotes many of his popular public lectures to the malady. Charcot often uses hypnosis to prompt his patients to reproduce their hysterical symptoms, and to his delight, Josephine proves extraordinarily susceptible to this unconscious manipulation. He is soon featuring the young woman on his stage, entrancing her into fantastical acts and hallucinatory fits before enraptured audiences and eager newsmen-many of whom feature her on their papers' front pages.
Laure, a ward attendant assigned to care for Charcot's new favorite, knows that Josephine's diagnosis is a godsend. Life in the Salpêtrière's Hysteria ward is far easier than in its dreaded Lunacy division, from which few inmates ever return. But as Josephine's fame grows, her memory starts to return-and with it, images of a terrible crime she's convinced she's committed. Haunted by these visions, and ensnared in Charcot's hypnotic web, she starts spiraling into seeming insanity. Desperate to save the girl she has grown to love, Laure begins to plot their escape from the Salpêtrière and its doctors. First, though, she must confirm whether Josephine is truly a madwoman, doomed to die in the asylum-or a murderer, destined for the guillotine.
Both are dark possibilities-but not nearly as dark as what Laure unearths when she sets out to discover the truth.
Editorial Reviews
Praise for The Madwomen of Paris
"Epstein has achieved her goal of immersing readers in the ‘stranger-than-fiction' universe of late-19th-century Paris. At a time when women's reproductive rights are under threat and people with unexplained medical conditions are routinely gaslit, The Madwomen of Paris provides a fascinating look back at a condition with modern-day resonance."-Science Magazine
"This beautifully crafted historical from Epstein evokes the cruel and misogynistic mental health system of late 19th-century Paris. . . . Combining elegant prose, artfully chosen historical details, and convincing characterizations, this haunting narrative showcases Epstein at her best."-Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"Laure and Josephine's story reflects the raging obsession that people had with hysteria. . . . It speaks to the dangers of treatments used on patients and the vulnerable positions in which they were placed. . . . A gripping historical novel that describes the treatment patients received from Dr. Charcot at Salpêtrière."-Booklist
Praise for the novels of Jennifer Cody Epstein
"Searing . . . a heartbreaking page-turner."-People
"An epic about friendship and family set against an inherently emotional, dramatic backdrop . . . a story that feels tragic and brutal and true."-USA Today
"Engrossing . . . Moving between decades and continents, Epstein reveals the devastating choices these women make."-Real Simple
"Both heartbreaking and hopeful, this story of a daughter searching for the truth about her mother's secret past, tangled up in old secrets and terrible lies, kept me up late turning pages."-Martha Hall Kelly, New York Times bestselling author of Lilac Girls
"A beautiful and haunting and utterly magnificent...
"Epstein has achieved her goal of immersing readers in the ‘stranger-than-fiction' universe of late-19th-century Paris. At a time when women's reproductive rights are under threat and people with unexplained medical conditions are routinely gaslit, The Madwomen of Paris provides a fascinating look back at a condition with modern-day resonance."-Science Magazine
"This beautifully crafted historical from Epstein evokes the cruel and misogynistic mental health system of late 19th-century Paris. . . . Combining elegant prose, artfully chosen historical details, and convincing characterizations, this haunting narrative showcases Epstein at her best."-Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"Laure and Josephine's story reflects the raging obsession that people had with hysteria. . . . It speaks to the dangers of treatments used on patients and the vulnerable positions in which they were placed. . . . A gripping historical novel that describes the treatment patients received from Dr. Charcot at Salpêtrière."-Booklist
Praise for the novels of Jennifer Cody Epstein
"Searing . . . a heartbreaking page-turner."-People
"An epic about friendship and family set against an inherently emotional, dramatic backdrop . . . a story that feels tragic and brutal and true."-USA Today
"Engrossing . . . Moving between decades and continents, Epstein reveals the devastating choices these women make."-Real Simple
"Both heartbreaking and hopeful, this story of a daughter searching for the truth about her mother's secret past, tangled up in old secrets and terrible lies, kept me up late turning pages."-Martha Hall Kelly, New York Times bestselling author of Lilac Girls
"A beautiful and haunting and utterly magnificent...
Readers Top Reviews
Mary
The Madwomen of Paris is a historical novel centering around Laure, first a patient and later a ward attendant, in La Salpêtrière asylum in Paris. I had a hard time getting into this book about mental illness or hysteria and treatments used during that time period. This book just wasn't for me. Thanks to the author, Random House/Ballantine Books, and NetGalley. I received a complimentary copy of this ebook. The opinions expressed in this review are entirely my own.
Short Excerpt Teaser
Chapter One
I didn't see her the day she came to the asylum.
Looking back, this sometimes strikes me as unlikely. Impossible, even, given how utterly her arrival would upend the already chaotic order of things at the Salpêtrière-not to mention change the course of my own life there. At times I even forget I wasn't present at that pivotal moment, for I can see it so clearly in my mind's eye: The blood-streaked clothing and skin. The wild eyes and unkempt hair. The slim legs, bare of stockings, covered with bruises and mud. That single bare foot-for she'd lost her boot at some point-as white and fragile as an unshelled egg. My mind replays her screams as the orderlies drag her from the ambulance, an otherworldly mix of falcon and banshee interspersed with strangled pleas: Nonono don't TOUCH me and I will kill myself and-most chillingly of all: They are coming! Do you hear me? THEY ARE COMING! I marvel at the sheer physical strength I saw-or think I saw-her displaying, at the way she fought so viciously against the men attempting to drag her into the admissions building that they had to briefly lay her down to attend to a wrist she'd bitten, a cheek she'd scratched, a kick she'd successfully landed to a loathsome man's privates. . . . It's all etched into my head with such clarity that, more than once, I've consulted the journal I kept at the time, scanning through its scribbled pages to affirm that these "memories" are, in fact, not memories at all. That rather, they are imaginative reconstructions, woven together from various medical reports and doctors' musings, and from snippets gleaned from those who did witness her arrival-or else were party to it, and bore the injuries to prove it.
Given my own history with mental disorders, I should perhaps find such self-deception troubling. And yet the truth is, I value these false reminiscences far more than I do my "valid" memories from that period, which to this day remain the bleakest of my life. Indeed, I sometimes suspect my mind of re-creating her spectacular arrival as a kind of defense against those same drab realities, to remind me that something better was coming. And, perhaps, to give me that much more of her to hold on to.
I'd been at the Salpêtrière-the largest women's asylum in France, and perhaps all Europe-for roughly a year by that point. But I'd only recently ceased being one of its patients, having been pronounced cured of the illness that had kept me sealed in its infamous hysteria ward for virtually all my nineteenth year of life. The verdict had come as little relief, for beyond the asylum I had nowhere to go, having lost both my parents, my home to my father's creditors, and-as I'd only recently learned-my beloved sister, Amélie, to France's byzantine foster care system. In desperation, I'd done what many penniless Salpêtrière "graduates" did to keep a roof over their heads: accepted a job as an asylum fille de service, or attendant, in the same gloomy and malodorous ward from which I'd just been discharged. It was thankless, menial work, my supervisor despised me, and the weekly wage was just a little under two francs-half of what male attendants were paid. That day, however, I had reason to believe I might be on the verge of escaping these miserable circumstances-and, hopefully, of finding my sister, about whom I was desperately worried. For Babette-Hysteria's hatchet-faced head nurse-had handed me a letter that afternoon.
"From a notaire," she'd noted cryptically. "Have you gotten yourself into trouble, Bissonnet?"
Though she'd clearly expected alarm on my part, I felt my heart leap with excitement. It was all I could do not to snatch the missive right out of her arthritic hand.
"No, Madame," I said as levelly as I could, and dropped the envelope into my apron pocket until she'd hurried off to check on one of the ward's epileptics. Only when she'd fully disappeared from view did I pull the letter out again, checking its sender's address to confirm that it matched that of my late father's notary, to whom I'd written several weeks earlier, and from whom I'd almost given up on hearing back. And-yes!-there it was: Étude de M. François LaBarge, Notaire, scripted in an even and methodical hand.
My heart beating slightly faster, I turned the envelope back over, inspecting the equally neatly printed mailing address:
I didn't see her the day she came to the asylum.
Looking back, this sometimes strikes me as unlikely. Impossible, even, given how utterly her arrival would upend the already chaotic order of things at the Salpêtrière-not to mention change the course of my own life there. At times I even forget I wasn't present at that pivotal moment, for I can see it so clearly in my mind's eye: The blood-streaked clothing and skin. The wild eyes and unkempt hair. The slim legs, bare of stockings, covered with bruises and mud. That single bare foot-for she'd lost her boot at some point-as white and fragile as an unshelled egg. My mind replays her screams as the orderlies drag her from the ambulance, an otherworldly mix of falcon and banshee interspersed with strangled pleas: Nonono don't TOUCH me and I will kill myself and-most chillingly of all: They are coming! Do you hear me? THEY ARE COMING! I marvel at the sheer physical strength I saw-or think I saw-her displaying, at the way she fought so viciously against the men attempting to drag her into the admissions building that they had to briefly lay her down to attend to a wrist she'd bitten, a cheek she'd scratched, a kick she'd successfully landed to a loathsome man's privates. . . . It's all etched into my head with such clarity that, more than once, I've consulted the journal I kept at the time, scanning through its scribbled pages to affirm that these "memories" are, in fact, not memories at all. That rather, they are imaginative reconstructions, woven together from various medical reports and doctors' musings, and from snippets gleaned from those who did witness her arrival-or else were party to it, and bore the injuries to prove it.
Given my own history with mental disorders, I should perhaps find such self-deception troubling. And yet the truth is, I value these false reminiscences far more than I do my "valid" memories from that period, which to this day remain the bleakest of my life. Indeed, I sometimes suspect my mind of re-creating her spectacular arrival as a kind of defense against those same drab realities, to remind me that something better was coming. And, perhaps, to give me that much more of her to hold on to.
I'd been at the Salpêtrière-the largest women's asylum in France, and perhaps all Europe-for roughly a year by that point. But I'd only recently ceased being one of its patients, having been pronounced cured of the illness that had kept me sealed in its infamous hysteria ward for virtually all my nineteenth year of life. The verdict had come as little relief, for beyond the asylum I had nowhere to go, having lost both my parents, my home to my father's creditors, and-as I'd only recently learned-my beloved sister, Amélie, to France's byzantine foster care system. In desperation, I'd done what many penniless Salpêtrière "graduates" did to keep a roof over their heads: accepted a job as an asylum fille de service, or attendant, in the same gloomy and malodorous ward from which I'd just been discharged. It was thankless, menial work, my supervisor despised me, and the weekly wage was just a little under two francs-half of what male attendants were paid. That day, however, I had reason to believe I might be on the verge of escaping these miserable circumstances-and, hopefully, of finding my sister, about whom I was desperately worried. For Babette-Hysteria's hatchet-faced head nurse-had handed me a letter that afternoon.
"From a notaire," she'd noted cryptically. "Have you gotten yourself into trouble, Bissonnet?"
Though she'd clearly expected alarm on my part, I felt my heart leap with excitement. It was all I could do not to snatch the missive right out of her arthritic hand.
"No, Madame," I said as levelly as I could, and dropped the envelope into my apron pocket until she'd hurried off to check on one of the ward's epileptics. Only when she'd fully disappeared from view did I pull the letter out again, checking its sender's address to confirm that it matched that of my late father's notary, to whom I'd written several weeks earlier, and from whom I'd almost given up on hearing back. And-yes!-there it was: Étude de M. François LaBarge, Notaire, scripted in an even and methodical hand.
My heart beating slightly faster, I turned the envelope back over, inspecting the equally neatly printed mailing address:
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