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How did the construction of male hysteria during WWI differ from the earlier approach to female hysteria? ... I will then bridge the questions together for complete understanding of how male hysteria has changed over time from WWI to The Vietnam war with PTSD (post traumatic stress disorder).
How was shell shock different from female hysteria? According to Showalter, “ For most, however, the anguish of shell shock included more general but intense anxieties about masculinity, fears of effeminate, even a refusal to continue the bluff of stoic male behavior…While epidemic female hysteria in Late Victorian England had been a form of protest against a patriarchal society that enforced confinement to a narrowly defined femininity, epidemic male hysteria in World War I was a protest against the politicians , generals, and psychiatrist”(172). Was shell shock an idealized label of male hysteria? Showalter goes on to say, “ The efficacy of the term “shell shock” lay in its power to provide a masculine-sounding substitute for the effeminate associations of “hysteria” and to disguise the troubling parallels between male war neurosis and the female nervous disorders epidemic before the war”(172).
Approximate Word count = 725 Approximate Pages = 2.9 (250 words per page double spaced)
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