In most African and Diaspora world views, madness or mental disorder is often associated with powers beyond the individual’s and society’s control. It is something beyond the world as we see it or know it. It is rather a state that cannot be explained scientifically. Rather madness is attributable to spiritual manipulation, or witch craft. However, in the recent fiction of women from black societies, the cause of madness has been defined differently. Madness and mental abnormality in the female characters are often caused by social and patriarchal induced conditions imposed on the women in these societies. This paper examines the theme of madness in the selected fictional writings of four Third World (particularly from Africa and her Diaspora) women writers. The women writers include Belizean Zee Edgell; South African Bessie Head; Caribbean-American Paule Marshall; and Nigerian Chinwe Okechukwu. However, other secondary materials relevant to the textual and inter-textual analysis of the works of the selected writers will be embedded in the paper.