Sex and the sisterhood

Since Lisa Appignanesi has raised the issue of crazy females in her latest book, Mad, Bad and Sad, and then dispatched it so exhaustively, with such depth of research and profundity of thought, there remains one stone that only a much more trivial mind is fit to turn: where does society stand on the sexiness of the madwoman?

This seems to me a very salient consideration in the making of the final decision as to whether to lock us up, drug us, electro-shock us, therapise us, pathologise us or simply leave us be. Ha. Did I say 'us'? Of course I meant 'them'.

There is nothing sexy about the English nutter. The literary trope here is Mrs Rochester, which is to say that, never minding the details of her lunacy, the main point of her is that she gets in the way of your sex life and could not

possibly be the object of such attention herself because of her messy hair.

No amount of modernist or post-modern neurotics will ever rehabilitate our home-grown female loony, I don't think. The cultural space surrounding her may contain elements of suspicion, misogyny, fear and subjugation of the unknown, but it does not posess even a grudging sexual frisson.

Frenchies, on the other hand... There isn't a French heroine in literature who isn't peerlessly sexy and also totally nuts. Therese Desqueyroux, Madame Bovary, Manon des Sources, Betty Blue... Seriously, journey through the centuries looking for a sane Gallic lady and you will not find one. Or if you do, she'll be always the bridesmaid and never the bride.

I bring this up simply to point out that the English way is not the only way. We think we're normal, but actually in our resolute failure to find nut-jobs even passingly attractive, we are traffic-wardenish in our national sexuality.