The Autobiography of a Neurasthene (1910): The Medical Counternarratives of Margaret Abigail Cleaves, MD

This article argues that Margaret Abigail Cleaves's The Autobiography of a Neurasthene was part of a body of nineteenth-century writing that attempted to reclaim and recover the voices of American women by chronicling their struggles with illnesses and cures and documenting their interactions with the medical profession. Cleaves's gynocentric counternarrative was a searing criticism of the prevalent medical model of her era that questioned its treatment of neurasthenic women and offered therapeutic alternatives such as electric, light and music therapy. By doing so, it positioned Cleaves as a significant force of change in understandings of women and their bodies.