Madeleine Pelletier (18 May 1874 – 29 December 1939) was a French physician, psychiatrist, first-wave feminist, and socialist activist.
Pelletier suffered a tragic end. Partly paralyzed by a stroke in late 1937, she, with her nurse and maid, was arrested for supervising an abortion on April 25, 1939. The case resulted from incest between a teenaged sister and brother. Suspiciously, the timing of the arrest coincided with a neo-natalist anti-abortion campaign. The judge ordered a mental examination; the psychiatrist reported she was "totally irresponsible." Accordingly, Pelletier—the first woman psychiatric intern in France—was committed on June 2 (May 27?) to the Perray-Vaucluse asylum at Épinay-sur-l'Orge, near Paris. Doubtless she was in bad health (stroke, arteriosclerosis, lung and eye problems) and exhibiting signs of failing judgment. But ill enough to warrant committal without the charge of abortion? There is strong reason to suspect the judge responded to political pressure to "put away" this scandalous woman to avoid a potentially messy trial.
"You can't imagine," she wrote to Hélène Brion , "how terrible it is to be in an asylum when one has all one's mental faculties." A pacifist socialist friend, Brion was her only visitor, five times. Pelletier dictated to her some memoirs of her childhood, "Anne dite Madeleine Pelletier," which exhibit no mental impairment, but her health deteriorated. She died in the asylum, alone, on December 29, 1939, and was buried without ceremony in the asylum's cemetery.
Pelletier suffered a tragic end. Partly paralyzed by a stroke in late 1937, she, with her nurse and maid, was arrested for supervising an abortion on April 25, 1939. The case resulted from incest between a teenaged sister and brother. Suspiciously, the timing of the arrest coincided with a neo-natalist anti-abortion campaign. The judge ordered a mental examination; the psychiatrist reported she was "totally irresponsible." Accordingly, Pelletier—the first woman psychiatric intern in France—was committed on June 2 (May 27?) to the Perray-Vaucluse asylum at Épinay-sur-l'Orge, near Paris. Doubtless she was in bad health (stroke, arteriosclerosis, lung and eye problems) and exhibiting signs of failing judgment. But ill enough to warrant committal without the charge of abortion? There is strong reason to suspect the judge responded to political pressure to "put away" this scandalous woman to avoid a potentially messy trial.
"You can't imagine," she wrote to Hélène Brion , "how terrible it is to be in an asylum when one has all one's mental faculties." A pacifist socialist friend, Brion was her only visitor, five times. Pelletier dictated to her some memoirs of her childhood, "Anne dite Madeleine Pelletier," which exhibit no mental impairment, but her health deteriorated. She died in the asylum, alone, on December 29, 1939, and was buried without ceremony in the asylum's cemetery.
Madeleine Pelletier (18 May 1874 – 29 December 1939) was a French physician, psychiatrist, first-wave feminist, and socialist activist.
Pelletier suffered a tragic end. Partly paralyzed by a stroke in late 1937, she, with her nurse and maid, was arrested for supervising an abortion on April 25, 1939. The case resulted from incest between a teenaged sister and brother. Suspiciously, the timing of the arrest coincided with a neo-natalist anti-abortion campaign. The judge ordered a mental examination; the psychiatrist reported she was "totally irresponsible." Accordingly, Pelletier—the first woman psychiatric intern in France—was committed on June 2 (May 27?) to the Perray-Vaucluse asylum at Épinay-sur-l'Orge, near Paris. Doubtless she was in bad health (stroke, arteriosclerosis, lung and eye problems) and exhibiting signs of failing judgment. But ill enough to warrant committal without the charge of abortion? There is strong reason to suspect the judge responded to political pressure to "put away" this scandalous woman to avoid a potentially messy trial.
"You can't imagine," she wrote to Hélène Brion , "how terrible it is to be in an asylum when one has all one's mental faculties." A pacifist socialist friend, Brion was her only visitor, five times. Pelletier dictated to her some memoirs of her childhood, "Anne dite Madeleine Pelletier," which exhibit no mental impairment, but her health deteriorated. She died in the asylum, alone, on December 29, 1939, and was buried without ceremony in the asylum's cemetery.
Pelletier suffered a tragic end. Partly paralyzed by a stroke in late 1937, she, with her nurse and maid, was arrested for supervising an abortion on April 25, 1939. The case resulted from incest between a teenaged sister and brother. Suspiciously, the timing of the arrest coincided with a neo-natalist anti-abortion campaign. The judge ordered a mental examination; the psychiatrist reported she was "totally irresponsible." Accordingly, Pelletier—the first woman psychiatric intern in France—was committed on June 2 (May 27?) to the Perray-Vaucluse asylum at Épinay-sur-l'Orge, near Paris. Doubtless she was in bad health (stroke, arteriosclerosis, lung and eye problems) and exhibiting signs of failing judgment. But ill enough to warrant committal without the charge of abortion? There is strong reason to suspect the judge responded to political pressure to "put away" this scandalous woman to avoid a potentially messy trial.
"You can't imagine," she wrote to Hélène Brion , "how terrible it is to be in an asylum when one has all one's mental faculties." A pacifist socialist friend, Brion was her only visitor, five times. Pelletier dictated to her some memoirs of her childhood, "Anne dite Madeleine Pelletier," which exhibit no mental impairment, but her health deteriorated. She died in the asylum, alone, on December 29, 1939, and was buried without ceremony in the asylum's cemetery.
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