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Laura Deane, Gender, Madness and Colonial Paranoia in Australian Literature: Australian Psychoses (Lexington Books, 2017)
Gender and madness appear in the question that opens this book: 'What is a madwoman?' (ix). The answer is provided through the lens of feminist literary theory, psychoanalysis and postcolonial theory; Laura Deane is a lecturer at Flinders University with expertise in literary theory and world literature. As the title of the book also indicates, 'Australian literature' is the prime focus of her enquiry, with 'colonial paranoia' playing an important part in the analysis.
'Australian literature' is a broad term to encompass a critique of the three Australian novels that form the core of Deane's thesis: Christina Stead's The Man Who Loved Children (1940) and Kate Grenville's Lilian 's Story (1985) and Dark Places (1995). These 'three novels of women's madness' (xvi) are subjected to insightful and original readings that support Deane's contention that
In Australian women's writing, madness operates against a backdrop of gender relations that distorts and limits women's experience and opportunities. Madness remains an important theme in the works of women writers informed by politics of gender ......