If you would specifically like to write about mental illness, and asylums as the dark corners of society, I'd suggest Charcot's patient Augustine - she was a 15 year old and one of his most famous 'hysterics'. She had a pretty tragic back-story too - servitude, r.ape and eventual mental illness. Charcot was intrigued by her and effectively made her the star of his studies on hysteria (which later went on to influence Freud, and compared to whom, Freud, that locus of feminist deconstruction, was MASSIVELY progressive on the female point of view). Her objectification by Charcot can be seen today in the photographs he took of her while she was having her 'episodes', which were often accompanied by convulsions. She escaped after a few years under his care, and no one really knows what became of her.
Also, what Miss Absynthe said. Old-school treatment of mental illness is what's truly creepy here...
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"Friends are allowed to make mistakes. The enemy is not allowed to make mistakes because his whole existence is a mistake, and we suffer from it. But the women's liberation front and gay liberation front are our friends, they are our potential allies, and we need as many allies as possible.” - Huey Newton
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