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.