![]() A novel’s perspective on the merits of the ‘asylum,’ whether repellent, intriguing or therapeutic, depends very much on the point of view from which the story is told. The tension between these two visions of the mental institution / psychiatric hospital continues to be irresistible to thriller writers. For the nineteenth century “pauper lunatic,” the asylum often lived up to its original meaning as a place of refuge. ![]() ![]() And even without any 20th century “treatments,” patients often recovered, temporarily at least, following a period of rest and nourishment. Handwritten casebooks, which provide a detailed record of the condition and treatment of each patient, suggest that most medics, then as now, were earnest in their concern to improve the health and composure of distressed individuals. The research into Victorian records that I carried out for my novel The Conviction of Cora Burns (2019) revealed a rather different picture of asylum life. Here then, is the enduring nightmare of asylum thrillers, used again in the recent movie Unsane (2018) in which the heroine, once labelled “deranged,” becomes powerless in the face of corrupt medical opinion. Her impassioned her pleas of sanity are treated as delusional, the doctors’ say is terrifyingly final. At the heart of this story is a woman imprisoned by her husband in an insane asylum for his financial gain. ![]()
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