This article focuses on the central motif of female madness in Gabriela Zapolska’s Madwomen’s
Ball in Salpêtrière from the year 1892. It aims to present the uniqueness of feminine perspective and
the way in which observations are recorded after the meeting with untypical heroines. The presentation
of individual patients as well as the reality of the psychiatric hospital help to depict moral and
ethical issues connected with the incidents described in the text. The motifs of dance and madness
are seen as elements of female emancipation in Zapolska’s shocking essay and allow for presenting
the double discrimination of disordered women in the 19th century.
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