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.
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