| Money, Marriage, and Madness: The Life of Anna Ott Contributor(s): Nielsen, Kim E. (Author) |
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ISBN: 0252085019 ISBN-13: 9780252085017 Publisher: University of Illinois Press OUR PRICE: $21.78 Product Type: Paperback - Other Formats Published: June 2020 |
| Additional Information |
| BISAC Categories: - Social Science | People With Disabilities - History | United States - 19th Century - Social Science | Women's Studies |
| Dewey: B |
| LCCN: 2020005351 |
| Series: Disability Histories |
| Physical Information: 0.5" H x 6" W x 8.9" (0.55 lbs) 152 pages |
| Themes: - Topical - Physically Challenged - Chronological Period - 19th Century - Sex & Gender - Feminine |
| Descriptions, Reviews, Etc. |
| Publisher Description: Anna Ott died in the Wisconsin State Hospital for the Insane in 1893. She had enjoyed status and financial success first as a physician's wife and then as the only female doctor in Madison. Throughout her first marriage, attempts to divorce her abusive second husband, and twenty years of institutionalization, Ott determinedly shaped her own life. Kim E. Nielsen explores a life at once irregular and unexceptional. Historical and institutional structures, like her whiteness and laws that liberalized divorce and women's ability to control their property, opened up uncommon possibilities for Ott. Other structures, from domestic violence in the home to rampant sexism and ableism outside of it, remained a part of even affluent women's lives. Money, Marriage, and Madness tells a forgotten story of how the legal and medical cultures of the time shaped one woman--and what her life tells us about power and society in nineteenth century America. |