Bodies without Voices: Reclaiming Female Subjectivity in Anna Furse's Augustine(Big Hysteria)"

This article explores the reclamation of female subjectivity in Anna Furse’s Augustine (Big Hysteria) through a critical examination of how the play reconfigures the historical narrative of female hysteria. Centering on the dramatization of the real-life case of Augustine, a 19th-century patient at the Salpêtrière Hospital under the supervision of neurologist Jean-Martin Charcot, Furse's work interrogates the patriarchal dynamics that rendered women’s bodies hyper-visible while simultaneously erasing their voices. Drawing upon feminist theory, the article argues that Augustine (Big Hysteria) functions as a radical intervention in the medicalized spectacle of female suffering by foregrounding the silenced subjectivity of Augustine. Through non-linear dramaturgy, embodied performance, and strategic metatheatricality, Furse exposes the mechanisms of gendered objectification and challenges the historical complicity of science and art in the construction of the "hysterical woman." The article further situates Furse’s play within broader feminist efforts to re-narrate histories of medical violence and explores how performative strategies can restore agency to historically marginalized female figures. By reimagining Augustine not merely as a pathological case but as a resistant subject, Furse reclaims a space for female integrity—an integrity grounded not in compliance with normative discourses of health, rationality, or femininity, but in the assertion of bodily autonomy and narrative authority. The article concludes by reflecting on the significance of reclaiming such voices in contemporary feminist theatre and the ongoing relevance of critiquing institutional frameworks that continue to silence women.