Rescued by Marat
Hilary Mantel
- Théroigne de Méricourt: A Melancholic Woman during the French Revolution by Elisabeth Roudinesco, translated by Martin Thom
Verso, 284 pp, £34.95, July 1991, ISBN 0 86091 324 4 - Women and the Limits of Citizenship in the French Revolution by Olwen Hufton
Toronto, 201 pp, £23.00, May 1992, ISBN 0 8020 6837 5
In 1817, at the asylum of La Salpêtrière in Paris, a long-term inhabitant died of pneumonia. Her malnourished, oedematous body was taken away for autopsy. For some years before her death she had been intractably and violently psychotic. She had crawled on the floor like an animal, eaten straw. She stripped off her clothes in freezing weather, and did not mind (her keepers noted) if men saw her naked. She threw icy water on her bedding and her person, and on the floor of her cell.
You are not logged in
- If you have already registered then you can login here
- If you are a print subscriber using the site for the first time please register here
- If you are not yet a subscriber you can subscribe here
- If you are a member of a subscribing institution or university library please login here
- If you have an institutional print subscription without online access then you can find out about our institutional online subscriptions here