Dickson elaborates on the Victorian discourse of "moral fault," according to which menopause disorders resulted from a deficiency in womanliness, and she traces the metamorphosis of these ideas into the "involutional melancholia" that supposedly afflicted so many women around the turn of the century.
In addition, in "involutional melancholia" mourning for lost ferility could also be extended to women with children, as aging came to signify loss and obsolescence.
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