A museum for its patrons and a prison for its relics, FEMM is a place where women who behave outside of the patriarchal status quo are kept for their own safety. When Char is admitted to the “hysterics exhibition,” she meets four women who have been kept there for longer than they can remember—Ginny, an emotionally volatile recluse who touts complacency but is secretly manipulating her way to escape; Zee, an excitable harpy prone to fits of ecstasy; Via, an apathetic lover of morbidity; and Opi, who often gets lost in familiar places and speaks in strange hallucinogenic riddles. As Char enters their realm, she begins to discover a community among the madwomen but pushes them to begin exposing the injustices of the emporium.