Several editions of The Madwoman in the Attic by Sandra M. Gilbert and Susan Gubar have been published since its initial publication in 1979. Once such version, the 2020 release, includes and introduction written by Lisa Appignanesi, who attempts to contextualize the piece and include information about its relevance to the Gothic genre. Appignanesi notes how even though the text was written in 1979, it still remains relevant due to its exploration of Gothic and feminist literary themes such as "entrapment, enclosure, self-starvation, and gaslighting". These themes can be seen in almost any piece of literature that includes any kind of "madwoman", a woman who has become separate from society and social norms. The clearest example of this is, perhaps, "The Yellow Wallpaper" by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, which includes a woman whose relatively "abnormal" behavior leads to her entrapment by her husband, causing a kind of "madness" that is described as less than human. Appignanesi's explanation of this "madness" of nineteenth century women is that they are "partially trapped in their time's myth of the natural, as we all inevitably are, [and] these writers' self-division led to what they sometimes experienced or conjured as madness," (XII).

Source:

Appignanesi, Lisa, et al. The Madwoman in the Attic: The Woman Writer and the Nineteenth-Century Literary Imagination, 2nd ed., Yale University Press, New Haven, CT, 2020, pp. XI-XVII. Veritas Paperback.