“The uterus was believed to wander around the body like an animal, hungry for semen.” The uterus was a troublemaker and was best sated when pregnant. The triad of marriage, intercourse, and pregnancy was the ultimate treatment for the semen-hungry womb. “Genital massage,” performed by a skilled physician or midwife, was often mentioned in medical writings. “Treatments,” including vaginal fumigations, bitter potions, balms, and pessaries made of wool, were used to bring that uterus back to its proper place. Most any symptom that belonged to a female body could be attributed to that wandering uterus. If it wandered the wrong direction and made its way to the throat there would be choking, coughing or loss of voice, if it got stuck in the the rib cage, there would be chest pain or shortness of breath, and so on. The uterus was believed to wander around the body like an animal, hungry for semen. The course is titled “The Wandering Uterus: Journeys through Gender, Race, and Medicine” and gets its name from one of the ancient “causes” of hysteria. The diagnosis was not only prevalent in the West among mainly white women but had its pre-history in Ancient Egypt, and was found in the Far East and Middle East too. We explored this wastebasket diagnosis that has been a dump-site for all that could be imagined to be wrong with women from around 1900 BCE until the 1950s. Hysteria, from the Greek hystera or womb. In our undergraduate seminar at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, we discussed “The Yellow Wallpaper” in the context of the nearly 4,000-year history of the medical diagnosis of hysteria. Then again, this past fall was entirely different. I have taught Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s 1891 story for nearly two decades and this past fall was no different.
I teach “The Yellow Wallpaper” because I believe it can save people.
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