A Hysterical Woman

A few years ago I came across manuscripts written at the beginning of the 20th century in my native Polish, depicting a woman’s struggle with mental illness and societal conventions. I was moved by the frankness of the writing so I started my research on its authoress - Sophie Gaudier-Brzeska - who died in a mental asylum in the UK in 1925. Soon I discovered that although her manuscripts have been read by others, they only served as an account of the life of her partner – French modernist sculptor Henri Gaudier-Brzeska, eighteen years her junior. I was struck by her strong voice and unconventional prose but even more so by her life. Sophie not only struggled with her relationship with her mother who refused to educate her and wanted to marry her off as soon as possible but was faced with the bankruptcy of the family estate, her father’s sudden death, severe depressions, struggles with finding employment, suicidal attempts. Finally she was hit by the biggest of blows: the death of her partner Henri during WW1 followed by her own incarceration in a mental hospital. By borrowing the title for this project from Sophie’s unpublished and highly autobiographical novel Hysterical Women I wanted to directly connect with her and expand on the novel’s theme of the limits of human endurance. How much can we bear before we begin to fall apart? When does madness start to claim us?