Leave comments about the ADE project as a whole on this post.
I don’t have much left to say concerning how the semester went, so I want to just talk about the topics given for this final reflection. During last class, we briefly discussed why it is important to read literature about mental illness. One of the points brought up by my classmates that I really agreed with was that writing about the experience of mental illness can communicate what it’s actually like to have that mental illness than more scientific writing. By just knowing the symptoms of an illness, it’s hard to know how that actually impacts someone’s day-to-day life. I think that this has the potential to foster a lot of empathy in a reader, especially one who doesn’t know anyone who has a particular mental illness or has never experienced mental health issues. Two of the texts we read this semester, Out of the Crazywoods and Marbles described the experienced of the authors coping with bipolar disorder, which is still a very stigmatized condition. Maybe through reading these and similar texts, people can become more understanding and empathetic towards people with mental health issues.
This class was the first English class I’ve taken where copyright was discussed any further than “don’t copy other’s work, it’s plagiarism”. I didn’t deal with copyright restrictions much with my project, as Ten Days in a Mad-House is in the public domain, but it has been interesting to see how other students have worked to publish their projects within the restrictions. None of us would have had to deal with the copyright of our primary sources if we had not used a website format for the project, but I think the format benefitted the project as a whole. I feel like the ePortfolio site made the digital edition a bit more engaging, and probably helped with navigating annotations for specific lines of text. If someone were to come across one of these digital editions before the original text, and process the text through the additional pieces (critical intro, annotations, etc.) then it would likely change how they viewed the text as a whole. In addition, I now have at least a basic understanding of WordPress and how to format a website. I’m still not sure if I’ll use this site for anything else in the future, but if I do decide to add more to it, I’ll have a basic understanding of how.
During the 18th – 19th century, and still somewhat today, women were expected to take care of the household, while men were expected to provide financially for that household. Women were expected to do a majority of the cooking, cleaning, and laundry for their families. Even if a family was wealthy and able to afford housekeepers or servants, those housekeepers were mostly women, and the other women who lived in the house would be expected to decorate and keep the space presentable. However, general housekeeping duties would be most applicable to the patients of the Lunatic Asylum, who were mostly poor or working-class. Through being forced to clean their living quarters, the patients are essentially performing a part of their role in society as women. They even have to clean up after the nurses and do their laundry, which can be interpreted as an additional reinforcement of normative behavior for their gender. Simultaneously, this may also be an allowance that the nurses do not need to perform their role extraneously, as they have not been deemed insane, and therefore don’t need to prove that they can be “proper women” to the institution of the asylum. The asylum staff may not have consciously thought of this while deciding on this rule for the patients, but regardless, a normative gender role is forced upon the patients as a punishment for being diagnosed insane or hysterical.
During the creation of this ADE Project, I’ve felt that my take on Ten Days in a Mad-House was not that far-fetched from the original text, nor was it particularly deep analysis. I think that many readers of the original text, even without my contributions, would come to understand similarly how gender norms impacted Nellie Bly’s stay at the Lunatic Asylum. Given this, I didn’t include much background information in the annotations themselves, as I thought it would be redundant. However, my critical introduction does provide some background information about mental health institutions as a whole during the 19th century, not just the specific ones explored in Ten Days in a Mad-House, which I think could be useful as context to any reader. I thought it would be important to note that Bly’s experiences were not solitary, but represent a general trend in the treatment of insanity at the time. It was useful to me as well, as I learned a lot of that context for the first time through working on this project, and it impacted my viewing of the text. For instance, I did not realize how easy it was during the late 1800’s for a man to have his wife institutionalized, even if I knew that this was a somewhat common occurrence before I read Reports from the 19th-Century Asylum. Additionally, I’ve been able to practice my analytical technique through working on this digital edition. This is the first project I’ve worked on where I was tasked to apply literary analysis to non-fiction, which I initially struggled with because the themes of the text were not as explicit. This is also the first time I’ve analyzed one text with a secondary source, which I also struggled with to begin with. However, As I wrote a few more annotations, I got more comfortable seeing similar themes or points of analysis in the two texts I wanted to analyze. Finally, I continued learning how to use WordPress in order to make a functioning ePortfolio. I had previously used my site for English 110, and mainly what I learned through setting up my ADE project was the construction of a decent menu system, in order to navigate the different parts of the project and the reflection blogs. I’m not sure if I’ll use this blog for other professional uses in the future. I Certainly understand that having a website is useful when it comes to presenting professionally, but I’m not sure that, with the field I’m aiming to go into (Marine/biological research science), a site like that would benefit from also having some literary analysis on it. That said, the skills I’ve learned from this project, both concerning analysis and website design, I’ll have for any other projects I work on, even outside of my professional career.
This is one of the few examples of the patients being allowed to do anything other than eating, sleeping, or bathing, and it is very telling that this, of all activities, is allowed by the Lunatic Asylum staff. While Bly’s writing materials are confiscated from her, and she describes herself as bored and with nothing to do on several occasions, playing the piano and singing a lullaby are allowed. Singing a lullaby to a child is a common part of motherhood, and allowing the patients to participate in it both restricts them to, and reminds them of, their role in society as women. At the same time, this choice of activity may also infantilize the patients to a certain extent. The institution of the asylum controls the lives and free will of patients, and considers them not capable of caring for themselves, and in a way reduces them to children. This detail could also be analyzed as Bly and Tillie Mayard singing a children’s lullaby directly to the other patients of the Lunatic Asylum. The hospital staff and Bly both seem to think of some of the other patients as incapable, and it is possible that Mayard feels similarly, and chose a song she felt would be appropriate for an infantilized group of people.
In Ten Days in a Mad-house, one of the overarching themes is that those who are deemed “insane” by medical and social institutions are not afforded the same level of free will as those considered sane are. During her time at the Women’s Lunatic Asylum at Blackwell’s Island, Nellie Bly has an exchange with one of the nurses and a doctor: “‘You play the piano?’ they asked. ‘Oh, yes; ever since I was a child,” I replied. Then they insisted that I should play, and they seated me on a wooden chair before an old-fashioned square. I struck a few notes, and the untuned response sent a grinding chill through me.” Later, she states, “When they found I would not play any more, Miss McCarten came up to me saying, roughly: ‘Get away from here,’ and closed the piano with a bang.” It’s clear that the hospital staff recognize her as having some skill in playing piano, as they asked her to play, but they don’t give her the agency to choose when she plays it. Instead of asking if she’d like to play, and leaving the opportunity open for her, they instead treat her almost like a dog that can perform a trick on command. Having restricted freedom in itself is reminiscent of patriarchal influence on women, and the forced submission of the asylum patients to the will of the hospital staff is another aspect of forced assimilation to normative behavior for women in general. At the time, women often didn’t have much control over their lives. As an “insane” patient, Nellie may have been assumed to need the guidance of a sane person, even if that person isn’t necessarily male, in saying when she can do things; eating, sleeping, even playing piano.
Previous annotations have explained that the environment of a mental hospital or asylum, and in general the categorization of women’s mental health often was a tool to enforce normative gendered behavior during the 18th and 19 centuries. However, this corrective attitude also extended towards “unwanted” behavior that was related to ethnic background, culture, or language. Briefly while attempting to convince a court judge and police officer that she was insane, Nellie Bly pretended to be from Cuba and spoke Spanish. However, “Although she passed as an ethnic Other only briefly–once incarcerated, she dropped the pretense and spoke in her obviously American English–she took advantage of the ease with which cultural difference could be encoded as pathological difference.” (Lutes). While not a perfect analog, as Germans would not be considered an ethnic Other, this mirrors an instance while in the Women’s Asylum, in which another patient can’t communicate with hospital staff, as she does not speak any English. “Thus was Mrs. Louise Schanz consigned to the asylum without a chance of making herself understood. Can such carelessness be excused, I wonder, when it is so easy to get an interpreter? If the confinement was but for a few days one might question the necessity. But here was a woman taken without her own consent from a free world to an asylum and there given no chance to prove her sanity.” In a way, her inability to speak English is a non-normative behavior in a country that emphasizes it over all other languages. This event seems to take place as Mrs. Schanz is just entering the asylum, but as she continues to live there, and her need for an interpreter is continually denied, she will likely have to slowly learn English in order to communicate with any of the staff or other patients.
This, as well as many other instances throughout Ten Days in a Mad-House, exemplifies that patients deemed insane were stripped of their free will within the asylum and other hospital settings. This was common even outside of the institutions that Bly visited, as is evidenced through the writings of several other former patients of other asylums, described in “Reports from the Nineteenth-Century Asylum.” “Treatment is similarly skewed in favor of medical authority. Not much care seems to be given to patient perspectives; Davis notes that an attendant answers for the patient to the doctor on rounds (Two Years and Three Months, 145-146),” as described by one patient. While this is not explicitly an example of non-normative gendered behavior or the discipline of it, a strong authoritative structure allows for the control of patient actions. By not allowing patients to even refute their diagnosed insanity, it sends a message that the behavior and actions of patients can and will be controlled by asylum staff, if they deem that behavior undesirable.
Primary Source:
Bly, Nellie. Ten Days in a Mad-House: A Story of the Intrepid Reporter, Dover Publications, 2019. Proquest Ebook Central, https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uneedu/detail.action?docID=5897062.
Secondary Sources:
Lutes, Jean M. “Into the Madhouse with Nellie Bly: Girl Stunt Reporting in Late Nineteenth-Century America,” American Quarterly, Vol. 54, No. 2, 2002, pp. 217-253.
Newman, Sara. “Reports from the Nineteenth-century Asylum.” Journal of Literary and Cultural Disability Studies, vol. 5, no. 3, 2011, pg. 261-278.
Other Sources:
Travela, Sara. “‘The Absolute Necessity of Seeming Herself’: Anne Elliot’s Work in Persuasion.” Nineteenth-Century Gender Studies, vol. 15, no. 1, 2019, [unpaged], https://www.ncgsjournal.com/issue151/tavela.html.
Hide, Louise. Gender and Class in English Asylums, 1890-1914. Palgrave Macmillan UK, 2014.
Treatment for mental illness and disability in America in the 19th century was overtaken with the concept of the mental hospital or asylum, a place to house and “treat” the insane, hysterical, invalid, or otherwise undesirable members of society, largely against their will. As the list of qualities that could diagnose someone as insane increased, so did the number of patients living in these institutions. These symptoms included anything from nervousness, to religious fervor, to melancholy. However, the behaviors that could get a woman institutionalized far surpassed those that would be recognized as signs of mental illness in the modern day. Writings from women at the time show that they were sent to asylums for expressing unconventional opinions in their households, such as a support of women’s rights or against conventional religious practices. (Newman 267) Legally, women were not considered their own entities, and could be committed against their will, with no evidence needed of their insanity than the word of their father or husband. As such, asylums were largely female spaces, including the Lunatic Asylum on Blackwell’s Island. In Ten Days in a Mad-House, Nellie Bly infiltrates this asylum by impersonating an insane person to report on the conditions of the institution and the treatment of its patients. Given this, it is no surprise that insubordinate and non-normative gendered behavior is punished both outside and inside the walls of the asylum, through the framing of this behavior as insanity.
In order to gain access to the asylum, Bly pretends to be insane, which she presents as general confusion about her situation, such as not knowing who she is, where she is, or why she is there, in combination with strange facial expressions. However, she also exhibits or is suspected to exhibit some non-normative behavior. While she is being questioned by the police and in court to determine her sanity, she briefly pretends to be from Cuba, and actually be named Nellie Moreno. The presentation of being another ethnicity and speaking another language than English, which is considered the “normal” for most Americans, probably assisted in her appearing as an “Other” from society. This could have furthered her goal in appearing as insane to the judge, as a diagnosis of insanity heavily relies on a perceived Otherness or rejection of social norms of the patient. Later, she is asked by a doctor at Bellevue Hospital whether she is a “woman of the town”. At the time, women, especially upper-class white women, expressing overt sexuality was highly stigmatized, and was heavily associated with mental illness or insanity. Sexual promiscuity was seen as a symptom of insanity, and the insane were seen as hypersexual by default. Additionally, something mentioned outside of Ten Days in a Mad-House in a local paper, stated that the ambulance driver who drove Bly to the dock to Blackwell’s island had put his arm around her, and assumed she was not insane when she did not return his advances. (Lutes) This, in combination with the stories of other asylum patients, shows that non-normative behavior was commonly assumed to be insanity in women in the 19th century.
While inside the Lunatic Asylum, patients are frequently punished for being insubordinate to the hospital staff and doctors. Their lives are strictly controlled, with eating, sleeping, bathing, and indulgence of hobbies only being allowed with permission from the staff, and any protestation of this control is met with strict punishment. This can include corporal punishment, such as hitting or physical restraint, and/or psychological punishment, such as restrictions of freedom of movement or withholding of personal items. In one instance, Bly is told to play the piano by a nurse, and upon deciding that she is done playing after a single tune, the nurse becomes angry and slams the piano closed. In the future, Bly only plays the piano when explicitly requested to. In addition, her notebook and pen are confiscated upon entering the asylum and are not given back upon request. This explicit control of their access to hobbies not only strips the patients of their agency, but restricts their activities to only those considered appropriate by the Lunatic Asylum. Outside of the necessities of eating, sleeping, and bathing, these activities are some of those considered normative for women at the time; taking short, accompanied walks, sitting around with not much to do, or cleaning. As punishment for being diagnosed insane or hysterical, these women are entered into an asylum or mental institution, where their transgressive behavior is disallowed or strictly controlled.
While the majority of Ten Days in a Mad-House, and in turn this annotated digital edition, are focused on the gendered setting and function of the asylum, the creation of the text is also gendered in its own right. At the time of publishing in the late 19th century, Nellie Bly’s journalism would become part of a new trend of reporting called girl stunt reporting. (Lutes) After this initial piece, Bly continued to report on stories while actively involving herself in them, which contrasts the previous tradition of dry, unattached journalism. This gave way for other women to work with this genre as well, allowing women to enter a field that had previously been dominated by men.
