The Hysteric Belongs to Me: Helen Oyeyemi’s The Opposite House

Abstract

The term hysteria has undergone several substantial changes throughout its history. A charged concept, deemed for a long time as pejorative and offensive to womanhood, it has lately been re-appropriated for literature under the concept of the “hysterical narrative.” This new trend purports to redeem hysteria and, together with it, redeem the feminine and show all its complexity. Helen Oyeyemi’s 2007 novel, The Opposite House, conflates the private and the public in two female characters, one human, the other divine. Through this double perspective the work self-reflexively re-evaluates hysteria both in the self and in the community.