Giselle, madness & death.

In this paper the Romantic ballet Giselle (1841) is used as a case study through which to examine the themes of madness and death. Giselle is a heartrending story of the intertwining of love and death. It is argued that Giselle is an evocative example of narratives of hysteria and suicide, and literature in the field of medical history is drawn upon to demonstrate the relations between the cultural fields of ballet, medicine, and the wider social world at the time of Giselle. Finally, it is suggested that the notion of the embodiment of vulnerability provides a fruitful way to meld our understandings of the interconnections between the arts, society, and medicine.