Menopause and Hysteria

According to medical texts in the Victorian period, menopause and hysteria are directly linked to one another. After reading the article “Menopause and Hysteria in Victorian Medical Texts and Rhoda Broughton’s ‘Mrs. Smith of Longmains” by Louise Benson James, I realized that old age is linked to insanity. The narrator is not taken seriously by her daughters, and they automatically assume she is sick and forbid her from society. They make her stay home while they go out and have fun. This ties into the statement the article makes about women not being wanted around in society when at menopausal age, for fear of spread delirium.

I decided to ask ChatGPT to summarize the above mentioned article to see what it had to say about the plot line in relation to medical texts on menopause and hysteria. It mentions how in the nineteenth century, doctors viewed hysteria as a nervous disorder and linked it directly to women’s reproductive organs. It also states that menopause was viewed as a period in which women were mentally unstable and vulnerable. ChatGPT goes on to say that the narrator experiences menopausal-like symptoms. It does not provide examples though. It argues that this story counteracts the claims made in medical texts, since the narrator was correct about the dream she had, and was not insane or delirious after all. ChatGPT points out that the narrator is middle-aged and has children, so she is in the menopausal period. Her dream (that ends up saving another woman’s life) shows that women are not irrational just because they are a certain age.

I think that this AI tool did a decent job at making a connection between the article and the story. I also think it summarized the key argument of the article, and discussed the overall history of the connection between menopause and hysteria. I do think that it could have done a better job at providing key examples, so I would not use it to summarize the article without reading the article as well. There was nothing in the summary that was incorrect. I think that the results may have been different if I asked the tool to provide specific examples from the article. All in all, ChatGPT did a decent job at summarizing the argument of the article.