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.
Month: November 2020 (Page 1 of 2)
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.
While Bly is being taken to Bellevue Hospital in order to be determined as sane or insane, she has already been marked as insane by virtue of being taken into the system. This sort of harsh treatment by the hospital staff would be seen as inappropriate for Bly as an upper-class woman, but her presumptive diagnosis of insanity strips her of this privilege. Bly’s “role” in this piece refers to her role as an insane woman, and by breaking her “role”, she resumes her spot as a proper woman of class. Considering the myriad reasons why a woman may be institutionalized in an asylum, including later when Bly is asked if she is a sex worker by a doctor, the presumption that she is exhibiting non-normative behavior causes the man to feel justified in handling her roughly. It could almost be compared to the treatment of a prisoner, as both are restricted in their movement and treated with little to no empathy.
A few more songs and we were told to go with Miss Grupe. We were taken into a cold, wet bathroom, and I was ordered to undress. Did I protest? Well, I never grew so earnest in my life as when I tried to beg off. They said if I did not they would use force and that it would not be very gentle. At this I noticed one of the craziest women in the ward standing by the filled bathtub with a large, discolored rag in her hands. She was chattering away to herself and chuckling in a manner which seemed to me fiendish. I knew now what was to be done with me. I shivered. They began to undress me, and one by one they pulled off my clothes. At last everything was gone excepting one garment. “I will not remove it,” I said vehemently, but they took it off. I gave one glance at the group of patients gathered at the door watching the scene, and I jumped into the bathtub with more energy than grace.
The water was ice-cold, and I again began to protest. How useless it all was! I begged, at least, that the patients be made to go away, but was ordered to shut up. The crazy woman began to scrub me. I can find no other word that will express it but scrubbing. From a small tin pan she took some soft soap and rubbed it all over me, even all over my face and my pretty hair. I was at last past seeing or speaking, although I had begged that my hair be left untouched. Rub, rub, rub, went the old woman, chattering to herself. My teeth chattered and my limbs were goose-fleshed and blue with cold. Suddenly I got, one after the other, three buckets of water over my head—ice-cold water, too—into my eyes, my ears, my nose and my mouth. I think I experienced some of the sensations of a drowning person as they dragged me, gasping, shivering and quaking, from the tub. For once I did look insane. I caught a glance of the indescribable look on the faces of my companions, who had witnessed my fate and knew theirs was surely following. Unable to control myself at the absurd picture I presented, I burst into roars of laughter. They put me, dripping wet, into a short canton flannel slip, labeled across the extreme end in large black letters, “Lunatic Asylum, B. I., H. 6.” The letters meant Blackwell’s Island, Hall 6.
By this time Miss Mayard had been undressed, and, much as I hated my recent bath, I would have taken another if by it I could have saved her the experience. Imagine plunging that sick girl into a cold bath when it made me, who has never been ill, shake as if with ague. I heard her explain to Miss Grupe that her head was still sore from her illness. Her hair was short and had mostly come out, and she asked that the crazy woman be made to rub more gently, but Miss Grupe said:
“There isn’t much fear of hurting you. Shut up, or you’ll get it worse.” Miss Mayard did shut up, and that was my last look at her for the night.
I was hurried into a room where there were six beds, and had been put into bed when some one came along and jerked me out again, saying:
“Nellie Brown has to be put in a room alone to-night, for I suppose she’s noisy.”
I was taken to room 28 and left to try and make an impression on the bed. It was an impossible task. The bed had been made high in the center and sloping on either side. At the first touch my head flooded the pillow with water, and my wet slip transferred some of its dampness to the sheet. When Miss Grupe came in I asked if I could not have a night-gown.
“We have no such things in this institution,” she said.
“I do not like to sleep without,” I replied.
“Well, I don’t care about that,” she said. “You are in a public institution now, and you can’t expect to get anything. This is charity, and you should be thankful for what you get.”
“But the city pays to keep these places up,” I urged, “and pays people to be kind to the unfortunates brought here.”
“Well, you don’t need to expect any kindness here, for you won’t get it,” she said, and she went out and closed the door.
A sheet and an oilcloth were under me, and a sheet and black wool blanket above. I never felt anything so annoying as that wool blanket as I tried to keep it around my shoulders to stop the chills from getting underneath. When I pulled it up I left my feet bare, and when I pulled it down my shoulders were exposed. There was absolutely nothing in the room but the bed and myself. As the door had been locked I imagined I should be left alone for the night, but I heard the sound of the heavy tread of two women down the hall. They stopped at every door, unlocked it, and in a few moments I could hear them relock it. This they did without the least attempt at quietness down the whole length of the opposite side of the hall and up to my room. Here they paused. The key was inserted in the lock and turned. I watched those about to enter. In they came, dressed in brown and white striped dresses, fastened by brass buttons, large, white aprons, a heavy green cord about the waist, from which dangled a bunch of large keys, and small, white caps on their heads. Being dressed as were the attendants of the day, I knew they were nurses. The first one carried a lantern, and she flashed its light into my face while she said to her assistant:
“This is Nellie Brown.” Looking at her, I asked:
“Who are you?”
“The night nurse, my dear,” she replied, and, wishing that I would sleep well, she went out and locked the door after her. Several times during the night they came into my room, and even had I been able to sleep, the unlocking of the heavy door, their loud talking, and heavy tread, would have awakened me.
I could not sleep, so I lay in bed picturing to myself the horrors in case a fire should break out in the asylum. Every door is locked separately and the windows are heavily barred, so that escape is impossible. In the one building alone there are, I think Dr. Ingram told me, some three hundred women. They are locked, one to ten to a room. It is impossible to get out unless these doors are unlocked. A fire is not improbable, but one of the most likely occurrences. Should the building burn, the jailers or nurses would never think of releasing their crazy patients. This I can prove to you later when I come to tell of their cruel treatment of the poor things intrusted to their care. As I say, in case of fire, not a dozen women could escape. All would be left to roast to death. Even if the nurses were kind, which they are not, it would require more presence of mind than women of their class possess to risk the flames and their own lives while they unlocked the hundred doors for the insane prisoners. Unless there is a change there will some day be a tale of horror never equaled.
In this connection is an amusing incident which happened just previous to my release. I was talking with Dr. Ingram about many things, and at last told him what I thought would be the result of a fire.
“The nurses are expected to open the doors,” he said.
“But you know positively that they would not wait to do that,” I said, “and these women would burn to death.”
He sat silent, unable to contradict my assertion.
“Why don’t you have it changed?” I asked. “What can I do?” he replied. “I offer suggestions until my brain is tired, but what good does it do? What would you do?” he asked, turning to me, the proclaimed insane girl.
“Well, I should insist on them having locks put in, as I have seen in some places, that by turning a crank at the end of the hall you can lock or unlock every door on the one side. Then there would be some chance of escape. Now, every door being locked separately, there is absolutely none.”
Dr. Ingram turned to me with an anxious look on his kind face as he asked, slowly:
“Nellie Brown, what institution have you been an inmate of before you came here?”
“None. I never was confined in any institution, except boarding-school, in my life.”
“Where then did you see the locks you have described?”
I had seen them in the new Western Penitentiary at Pittsburg, Pa., but I did not dare say so. I merely answered:
“Oh, I have seen them in a place I was in—I mean as a visitor.”
“There is only one place I know of where they have those locks,” he said, sadly, “and that is at Sing Sing.”
The inference is conclusive. I laughed very heartily over the implied accusation, and tried to assure him that I had never, up to date, been an inmate of Sing Sing or even ever visited it.
Just as the morning began to dawn I went to sleep. It did not seem many moments until I was rudely awakened and told to get up, the window being opened and the clothing pulled off me. My hair was still wet and I had pains all through me, as if I had the rheumatism. Some clothing was flung on the floor and I was told to put it on. I asked for my own, but was told to take what I got and keep quiet by the apparently head nurse, Miss Grady. I looked at it. One underskirt made of coarse dark cotton goods and a cheap white calico dress with a black spot in it. I tied the strings of the skirt around me and put on the little dress. It was made, as are all those worn by the patients, into a straight tight waist sewed on to a straight skirt. As I buttoned the waist I noticed the underskirt was about six inches longer than the upper, and for a moment I sat down on the bed and laughed at my own appearance. No woman ever longed for a mirror more than I did at that moment.
I saw the other patients hurrying past in the hall, so I decided not to lose anything that might be going on. We numbered forty-five patients in Hall 6, and were sent to the bathroom, where there were two coarse towels. I watched crazy patients who had the most dangerous eruptions all over their faces dry on the towels and then saw women with clean skins turn to use them. I went to the bathtub and washed my face at the running faucet and my underskirt did duty for a towel.
Before I had completed my ablutions a bench was brought into the bathroom. Miss Grupe and Miss McCarten came in with combs in their hands. We were told to sit down on the bench, and the hair of forty-five women was combed with one patient, two nurses, and six combs. As I saw some of the sore heads combed I thought this was another dose I had not bargained for. Miss Tillie Mayard had her own comb, but it was taken from her by Miss Grady. Oh, that combing! I never realized before what the expression “I’ll give you a combing” meant, but I knew then. My hair, all matted and wet from the night previous, was pulled and jerked, and, after expostulating to no avail, I set my teeth and endured the pain. They refused to give me my hairpins, and my hair was arranged in one plait and tied with a red cotton rag. My curly bangs refused to stay back, so that at least was left of my former glory.
After this we went to the sitting-room and I looked for my companions. At first I looked vainly, unable to distinguish them from the other patients, but after awhile I recognized Miss Mayard by her short hair.
“How did you sleep after your cold bath?”
“I almost froze, and then the noise kept me awake. It’s dreadful! My nerves were so unstrung before I came here, and I fear I shall not be able to stand the strain.”
I did the best I could to cheer her. I asked that we be given additional clothing, at least as much as custom says women shall wear, but they told me to shut up; that we had as much as they intended to give us.
We were compelled to get up at 5.30 o’clock, and at 7.15 we were told to collect in the hall, where the experience of waiting, as on the evening previous, was repeated. When we got into the dining-room at last we found a bowl of cold tea, a slice of buttered bread and a saucer of oatmeal, with molasses on it, for each patient. I was hungry, but the food would not down. I asked for unbuttered bread and was given it. I cannot tell you of anything which is the same dirty, black color. It was hard, and in places nothing more than dried dough. I found a spider in my slice, so I did not eat it. I tried the oatmeal and molasses, but it was wretched, and so I endeavored, but without much show of success, to choke down the tea.
After we were back to the sitting-room a number of women were ordered to make the beds, and some of the patients were put to scrubbing and others given different duties which covered all the work in the hall. It is not the attendants who keep the institution so nice for the poor patients, as I had always thought, but the patients, who do it all themselves—even to cleaning the nurses’ bedrooms and caring for their clothing.
About 9.30 the new patients, of which I was one, were told to go out to see the doctor. I was taken in and my lungs and my heart were examined by the flirty young doctor who was the first to see us the day we entered. The one who made out the report, if I mistake not, was the assistant superintendent, Ingram. A few questions and I was allowed to return to the sitting-room.
I came in and saw Miss Grady with my notebook and long lead pencil, bought just for the occasion.
“I want my book and pencil,” I said, quite truthfully. “It helps me remember things.”
I was very anxious to get it to make notes in and was disappointed when she said:
“You can’t have it, so shut up.”
Some days after I asked Dr. Ingram if I could have it, and he promised to consider the matter. When I again referred to it, he said that Miss Grady said I only brought a book there; that I had no pencil. I was provoked, and insisted that I had, whereupon I was advised to fight against the imaginations of my brain.
After the housework was completed by the patients, and as the day was fine, but cold, we were told to go out in the hall and get on shawls and hats for a walk. Poor patients! How eager they were for a breath of air; how eager for a slight release from their prison. They went swiftly into the hall and there was a skirmish for hats. Such hats!
