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Showalter E.

Hystories

(1997)

[p.61] There is no question that the feminist effect to rethink hysteria has had a major positive effort on literary criticism. It has also had real impact for psychiatry and psychoanalysis. But the feminist embrace of all abuse narratives and the treatment of all women as survivors have troubling implications. Claiming hysteria and admiring its victims may have had inspirational functions in the 1970s: feminism, like other insurgent movements, needed martyrs. But Saint Dora's days are over. Today's feminists need models rather than martyrs; we need the courage to think as well as the courage to heal.