Mahnoor Saqib

FIQWS 10108

Professor Von Uhl

16 September 2019

Literacy Narrative

The painting of Charcot, A Clinical Lesson at the Salpetriere by Andre Brouillet in 1887. In the image, it shows the behavior of males and females, in which some of them are standing and others are sitting. The color of the painting reflects a serious moment. The image was very disturbing because of the way the woman is being held by a man and stared at by a group of men. 

In the painting, there are a bunch of men and a few women in which one of them is not feeling well. The image is making me feel uncomfortable. In the painting, the man is holding the woman is an awful way that her shirt is coming off from the top. Even though the woman is unconscious, she is still forced to stand. Since she fell unconscious and she does not know that she is being touched by a man without her consent. I believe that it is very disrespectful that they are using the woman as an object to study. 

Moreover, a group of men in the audience is staring at the woman and not reacting to the way the woman is being treated. I believe that the group of men in the image does not give women the respect that they deserve. They probably think the same way the other men would think of women in the 1800s, not giving them their rights, forced them to live a domestic life and still do not respect them. This painting reminds me, The Yellow Wallpaper, in which the husband of the narrator whose name was John. He was very strict with her wife about her health, John would not allow her to do anything in the house. He also gave him a nursery room where the windows were barred and the wallpaper was yellow. John would treat her as a child, that she does not have any freedom to do anything on her. She used to write but John stops her from writing which made her illness worse. 

Furthermore, in the image, the professor is giving a lecture to his students (a group of men) probably on hysteria using the woman. The way the professor is using the body of the woman like it is an object and does not have feelings. Is he trying to teach the treatment for hysteria, he should use Dr. Breuer’s method, in which he hypnotizes his patient and ask them questions about their past. The professor is doing the same thing that the other doctors did to the treatment of hysteria. Since the doctor only was only able to find organ illness so when any hysteria patients would come to them and they do not know what is happening. So they would just simply say that the patient is making it up or thinking too much about it, nothing happened to them because they did not want to be embarrassed in front of people by telling them that they do not know what is happening. The professor probably thinks the same way that woman is lying about their health. 

In conclusion, by looking at the painting I feel uncomfortable because of the behavior of the men toward an unconscious woman. The woman is not in good condition but she is still forced to stand up which shows that the men in that lecture hall do not respect the feelings of the woman and her personal space. We probably need some rest and some medicate treatment like Breuer treats his patient.