![]() ![]() ![]() Then, after falling out of common usage for 50 or so years, gaslight returned to the lexicon with gusto in the age of #MeToo and misinformation. ![]() Wallace, who wrote: “It is also popularly believed to be possible to ‘gaslight’ a perfectly healthy person into psychosis by interpreting his own behavior to him as symptomatic of serious mental illness.” By the middle of the century, the title of the story had become verbal shorthand for its central narrative action. He also found a 1962 essay by Canadian anthropologist Anthony F. According to a 1948 Miami News article about divorce proceedings, the plaintiff claimed that her husband “gave her the Gaslight treatment.” Research by the linguist Ben Zimmer uncovered casual usage of the term in a sitcom in 1952, and again in 1962. The central conceit of the story touched a nerve-and the title of the story came to mean something outside the confines of the theater. Thus goes the plot of the 1938 hit play Gas Light, adapted into numerous forms, including a radio play called Angel Street, an American play, and, most famously, a 1944 Best Picture–nominated movie starring Ingrid Bergman. She realizes she’s not crazy he’s messing with her. She realizes that he must be pretending to leave, but actually just going upstairs (and turning the lights on). Soon after her husband leaves, she hears footsteps from the locked upper floors, and the gas lights in the room she’s in flicker and dim. Not a bad plan for a conniving, murderous sociopath! He begins by leaving the house for long periods of time without telling her where he’s going.īut the wife has an ally in the home itself: the sconce-light wall fixtures in the building use a common reserve of gas. So he begins to play tricks on her to make her feel crazy, hoping to have her institutionalized, which would give him her power of attorney. As you can probably imagine, Victorian culture isn’t too kind to women-socially, legally, or emotionally. In Victorian London, a husband wants to get rid of his wife so that he can take the valuable jewels she’s inherited from her late aunt without drawing attention to himself. ![]()
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