ABSTRACT
While there were attempts to explain mental illness in England in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, general understandings were, from our modern vantage point, archaic. It was widely believed that strange behaviors, especially exhibited by women, could be the result of sacred or demonic possession. Women who suffered phantom pregnancies were also deemed mad, but it is now understood that it was often difficult to determine actual pregnancies given the limitations of early modern science. Other women indeed suffered long periods of irrationality; they were described as spending their time crying and howling and were known as lunatics, or women with their wits “greatly decayed,” or “deprived of reason.” Some women also starved themselves to death. The labeling of “madness” could have legal implications over property control or commitment to Bedlam or to another prison. In the absence of support and resources to alleviate these women’s suffering, their lives often ended tragically.
