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The Madness of Mary Lincoln
written by Jason Emerson
Studio : Southern Illinois University Press
by Southern Illinois University Press
Release Date : 2007-09-06
Publisher : Southern Illinois University Press
Released : 2007-09-25
Availability : Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Number of Items : 1
EAN : 9780809327713
Avg. Customer Rating: (based on 6 reviews)
List Price : $29.95
Our Price : $18.22
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Product Description |
In 2005, historian Jason Emerson discovered a steamer trunk formerly owned by Robert Todd Lincoln's lawyer and stowed in an attic for forty years. The trunk contained a rare find: twenty-five letters pertaining to Mary Todd Lincoln's life and insanity case, letters assumed long destroyed by the Lincoln family. Mary wrote twenty of the letters herself, more than half from the insane asylum to which her son Robert had her committed, and many in the months and years after.
The Madness of Mary Lincoln is the first examination of Mary Lincoln’s mental illness based on the lost letters, and the first new interpretation of the insanity case in twenty years. This compelling story of the purported insanity of one of America’s most tragic first ladies provides new and previously unpublished materials, including the psychiatric diagnosis of Mary’s mental illness and her lost will.
Emerson charts Mary Lincoln’s mental illness throughout her life and describes how a predisposition to psychiatric illness and a life of mental and emotional trauma led to her commitment to the asylum. The first to state unequivocally that Mary Lincoln suffered from bipolar disorder, Emerson offers a psychiatric perspective on the insanity case based on consultations with psychiatrist experts.
This book reveals Abraham Lincoln’s understanding of his wife’s mental illness and the degree to which he helped keep her stable. It also traces Mary’s life after her husband’s assassination, including her severe depression and physical ailments, the harsh public criticism she endured, the Old Clothes Scandal, and the death of her son Tad.
The Madness of Mary Lincoln is the story not only of Mary, but also of Robert. It details how he dealt with his mother’s increasing irrationality and why it embarrassed his Victorian sensibilities; it explains the reasons he had his mother committed, his response to her suicide attempt, and her plot to murder him. It also shows why and how he ultimately agreed to her release from the asylum eight months early, and what their relationship was like until Mary’s death.
This historical page-turner provides readers for the first time with the lost letters that historians had been in search of for eighty years.
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Madness of Mary Lincoln |
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This was an incredibly well researched work. New material gave the feeling that the reader was part of the rollercoaster life of Mary Lincoln. |
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Poor excuse for scholarship |
This is one of the weakest books I have ever read on either of the Lincolns, and comes across largely as a toss-off result of his research on Robert T. Lincoln and his unbelievable (and seemingly wasted) discovery of previously unknown MTL letters. Emerson completely ignores the vast scholarship on Abraham Lincoln's own mental illness, citing the exceptional work "Lincoln's Melancholy," but mentions nothing of his own severe depression. He completely dismisses the well-documented historical fact of women being committed to institutions against their will or need, particularly after being widowed, and there is no gender analysis of the public or medical response to Mary Lincoln's erratic behavior. And even if she were, as Emerson claims, suffering from bipolar disorder, that hardly qualified her as "insane" or requiring hospitalization. Few women could have suffered as many tragic losses as she did - not the least of which was having her husband murdered as he sat beside her - and withstood it with complete strength and equanimity.
Worst of all seems to be the zero-sum value judgment Emerson seems to need to draw in order to redeem the negative reputation of R.T. Lincoln as a son - there is no nuance in either character's behavior; M.T. Lincoln is completely nuts and therefore malicious, while R.T. Lincoln is the perfect understanding son trying to do what is best for his mother. Good history rarely ignores so many valuable sources or lacks any degree of nuance. This book unfortunately does both. |
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Insight into this figure's troubles |
I found this book to lend key insight into the troubled mind of an often-misunderstood woman. I also found her relationship with Abraham Lincoln to be anything but "normal." She was actually his second choice among her own sisters, and it appears theirs was a relationship fraught with extreme highs and lows, not always attributable solely to her flaws.
Initially a tad (no pun intended) eccentric, the horrors she experienced ultimately served to unravel her. Seeing her husband and children die before her very eyes was simply too much, leading to her confinement in a "home," by her loving son Thomas. As is frequently the case in these matters, she felt that Thomas, a good and worthy man, had betrayed her and spent the remainder of her days vilifying him.
The writing is clear, though a bit plodding at times. An historian's fascination with minutiae sometimes clouds the narrative flow, particularly for the casual reader.
Nevertheless, there is much to learn here, and much to recommend this woman's sad tale. |
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Retrospective diagnosis |
I should say first that my own works on Mary Lincoln were generously referenced by Jason Emerson, with whom I had some correspondence as he prepared his book. My article, "Mary Lincoln's Final Illness: A Medical and Historical Reappraisal" (with co-author the late Robert Feldman, a neurologist)was published in the Journal of the History of Medicine,1999, volume 54, 511-542; also "Mary Lincoln's 'Suicide' Attempt: A Physician Reconsiders the Evidence", published in the Lincoln Herald, 2003. I can make both articles available if you write to me at bertzpoet@yahoo.com.
Feldman and I show quite substantially that Mary Todd Lincoln suffered from a spinal cord degeneration called tabes dorsalis, and that the physicians who examined her in 1882 (commissioned to do so by Congress as it considered her plea for a pension) were experts in that disease. The signs and symptoms of that physical illness were the major pieces of 'evidence' to impute insanity at her trial. As for her delusional state in the run-up to the trial and just after, it is clear that this was a post-traumatic stress reaction to the 10th anniversary of her husband's murder -- it was not the first time that she had other, less severe, 'anniversary' reactions, something she herself recognized.
Although the diagnosis of Bipolar Disorder is interesting, given her high strung and volatile personality with a mania for shopping, it can only be conjecture. Curiously enough with only four months of being in the asylum (truly a rest home for her, no medications or constraint,)in the years following, she showed no more classic manifestations of Bipolar Disorder; in fact, rather mellowed and reconciled with her son.
Emerson's book is splendidly written and a fine contribution to the field of Lincoln studies.
Norbert Hirschhorn MD |
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Hardly 'Historical' |
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My suggestion to people interested in the life of Mary Todd Lincoln is to read all available related material, including Jason Emerson's book, and think critically as you do. I think it would be especially unwise to naively accept this book "The Madness of Mary Lincoln" as a true account of her life. While any reader will appreciate the copies of letters of correspondence between Mary Todd Lincoln and other important historical figures in this book's appendix, I believe that readers will be and should be critical of the author's work. This book consists of many contradictions (often within the same paragraph), a parochial attitude (not unlike many of the 19th century individuals being discussed), several assumptions, and too many unsupported arguments. Overall, my rating of "The Madness of Mary Lincoln" is low, because as an anthropologist I believe the author was overtly subjective under the pretence of being unbiased and I found this troubling. The author's language says it all-- from the beginning . . . The "Madness" of Mary Lincoln (emphasis mine). In Emerson's epilogue he emphasizes that it is harmful to dichotomize these historical individuals as either villains or heroes and it is equally unwise to consider any story without it's historical context. I agree with him and am astonished that he did not follow his own advice in this book. Mad In America: Bad Science, Bad Medicine, and The Enduring Mistreatment of the Mentally IllTrauma and Recovery: The Aftermath of Violence--from Domestic Abuse to Political TerrorMadness and Civilization: A History of Insanity in the Age of Reason |
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