The Mad Women's Ball: The prize-winning, international bestseller and Sunday Times Top Fiction selection

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When you see paintings from the time, he’s God, surrounded by admiring men in tuxedos,” says Laurent. The perfect opportunity, it would seem, is the upcoming Mad Women’s Ball, the annual Lenten gala that invites the Parisian elite to come dance and mingle with the “exotic creatures” kept caged in Salpetriere. Following the death of her sister Blandine, Geneviève has written thousands of letters to the deceased. Jeanne is uneasy with her emotions, and her erratic action tells something about her repressed self.

Geneviève initially treats Eugénie the same as others, but after Eugénie divulges pertinent truth about Geneviève’s sister, the nurse comes to realize Eugénie’s unique abilities.When attending concerts in the usual manner, though, she noticed that “the energy in the audience doesn’t equal the energy performers feel on stage. Dancing here is also symbolic since although a 19th-century woman has to dance to the tunes of a patriarchal vigilante, she reasserts her artistic freedom through the creative act of performance. I didn’t want to depict him as a very cold doctor, even though he was a divisive figure… I think he genuinely wanted to help the women in his care, but… it is for the reader to decide. Once a year there was an annual ball at the Salpêtrière with the cream of society invited to come and view the mad women, all dressed up like the stars of a freak show.

When young Eugenie is committed to the asylum, Genevieve assumes that the new girl is just like all the other women, protesting her own sanity despite all evidence to the contrary. Victoria Mas is even-handed in her depiction of Salpetriere—some of the women were glad for a clean, warm refuge from an unforgiving world outside the asylum walls, while others used their time there to build the skills they would need to thrive once assessed as “cured”—but she is highly critical of the misogyny that strips women of their autonomy and takes advantage of the powerless.All she wants is to ensure that her charges are maintained according to sanitary standards, as the doctors advise. Upon protesting, Eugénie is prescribed the cold water treatment, followed by the hot water treatment. Set in late 19th century France, in the bleak atmosphere of the Salpetriere, the first thing one notices is that all the inmates are women, while all the doctors are men. This article was amended on 16 September 2021 to remove an incorrect reference to The Mad Women’s Ball being Laurent’s debut film as director.