The definition of kleptomania as a disease in the second half of the 19th century was tied to Victorian assumptions about class and gender, according to a historian at Princeton University.
People diagnosed as kleptomaniacs in the late 19th century were almost always female and middle class, writes Elaine S. Abelson in the autumn issue of the journal Signs. The diagnosis arose partly, she argues, out of the medical belief at that time that mental instability in women was linked to their reproductive function. Menstrual disorders, uterine disease, and “ovarian insanity” were commonly given as root causes for the women’s kleptomania.
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