Our next-door she-neighbour: An approach to histery in a short story written by a woman

Abstract

Presentation, study and publication of an original narrative, written at the end of last century by Concepción Morell (1864-1906), a quite complex and contradictory woman, who has become known to us for her personal relationship to Benito Perez Galdós. The narrative that she handed or sent to the novelist.consists of a manuscript of 43 numbered pages written only on one side. Concepción Morell's short story is very theatrically exposed and poses suggestive expectations through the manifestations and the symptomatology of a hysterical woman who is watched and analyzed by male characters, although both the insane protagonist and the spectators/narrators express the contradictions and the experiences of the woman writer. This text is also of interest because it is one of the first woman's writings known to us dealing with histery at the end of the nineteenth century which, among many other items, depicts some of the better known symptoms of this disease at that time. It also gives us an overview of the social importance of that evil which became so manifest both in everyday and in the literary life.