The Victorian Era may be seen as a real „age of madness‟ because after all, the study of the human mind was definitely established during that time, since new branches of medical science, psychology, neurology and sexology defined new type of disease ( for example mental conditions such as hysteria) and new patients as Anne-Julia Zwierlein points out. Those „new patients‟, in fact, no longer fit the old cliché of the dehumanized raving lunatic, they were, instead , proper Victorian ladies, a fact that both shocked and fascinated Victorian society. As Elaine Showalter writes, the appealing madwoman gradually displaced the repulsive madwoman, both as the prototype of the confined lunatic and as a cultural icon (Showalter). This strange „appeal‟ of the madwoman can also be observed in the era‟s cultural representations, especially its literature, from Collins‟ „Woman in White‟ to the ghostly „Miss Havisham‟ of Dickens, the images of deranged and deviant women seem to haunt the great English novels. Insanity and madness also appears in contemporary Neo-Victorian fiction, for example in Sarah Waters‟ lesbian version‟ of Victorian gothic and sensation fiction, her 2002 novel „Finger smith‟ in which the two female protagonists both become enmeshed in a complex plot, scheming to send each other to the madhouse. This example of female mental illness in Victorian era is represented in Waters‟ novels through the depiction of 19th century space and sexuality focused mainly on three heterotopias: the theatre, the women‟s prison and the private madhouse. Waters emphasizes structural failure in her representation of these spaces, by permitting her illegitimate characters to occupy other sites, including the home. Waters‟s work is chiefly concerned with the sexuality of her protagonists. Space is not usually central, however it has a high impact. For example, some critics discuss the lesbian identity of Nancy Astley, the heroine of „Tipping the Velvet‟, as it is depicted against the backdrop of 19th century London..