
Ten Days in a Mad House is Nellie Bly’s personal experience in the Women’s Lunatic Asylum on Blackwell’s Island, New York.  In Bly’s account, she describes the poor and unfair treatment given to women patients.  Asylums all over the world treated women in similar ways by giving them no opportunity to prove their sanity, allowing society to enroll them in asylums against their will and giving male doctors control over patients’ fate.  These treatments in the asylum parallel to women’s lack of rights, harsh social norms of the time period, and the male dominated culture.  By analyzing the treatment of women patients in asylums, readers get a better understanding of the suffrage and lack of rights women had in the 19th century and the worldwide social belief that women were inferior.         

The poem Scene in a Private Mad-House is M. G. Lewis’ personal account of being admitted into an asylum.  In her poem, she illustrates the mistreatment and horrors of living in a 19th century mad-house, which were almost identical to those Bly experienced.  Although Lewis’ poem was set in Ireland and Nellie Bly went to an asylum in New York, they both gave very similar personal accounts.  The similarity proves that not only asylums in the United States treated their patients poorly, but asylums worldwide paralleled this treatment.   This evidence argues that during the 19th century, women worldwide were diagnosed based on social attitudes about women and their lack of power.  Asylums were manipulated by society to get rid of people who didn’t adhere to their norms.  The Dublin Penny Journal, which printed Lewis’ poem, says that women were forced into asylums by people they knew, often their husbands.  However, it says the worst part about being put in the asylum was not the treatment, but the “horrible dread of being thought mad by others” (The Dublin Penny Journal 362).  It is important to understand that most women worldwide were admitted into asylums not because they were mentally unhealthy or incapable, but because their behavior went against social norms.  Lewis, throughout her first two stanzas, characterizes the asylum as a prison by using the words “jailer,” “chains,” “cell” and “captive” (362).  This correlates to how women were treated as prisoners in society.  In, The Insane In 19th Century Britain: A Statistical Analysis of a Scottish Insane Asylum, Mary Orr Johnson examines a database of patients from the Royal Asylum in Gartnavel, Scotland during the 19th century.  Johnson examines how society viewed the mentally ill no longer as curable, but as a punishment for being immoral.  This societal change is what lead to the abusive treatment both Bly and Lewis experienced.  Women were treated poorly because the perception of them was that of sinners and idiots, making it acceptable to treat them as such.  Instead of an asylum being expected to care for patients with mental impairments, asylums were viewed as punishment for criminals.  Johnson also says most literature supports the theory that more women were admitted into asylums than men because society gave women “less room for strong emotions which could be viewed as mad ravings” (Johnson 5).  Elderly women, between ages fifty and fifty-nine were held in asylums much longer than men because their role in society was “less important than a man’s” (Johnson 11).  Also, young women in asylums were viewed as “both crazier and more dangerous than their male counterparts” (Johnson 11).  These examples show that societies attitude towards women influenced how easily women were labelled as insane and that admittance into an insane asylum was due to lack of rights women had over their own lives.     

Women in the 19th century had few rights, including the right to prove their sanity before being taken away to a mental institution. In her poem Lewis says, “My tyrant husband forged the tale/ Which chains me in this dismal cell;” reflecting the idea that women had little rights to protect themselves against male accusations.  Similarly, Bly proclaims to her doctor that she is mentally stable saying, “I am not sick and I do not want to stay here” (Bly 284).  She also states “No one has the right to shut me up in this manner,” however the doctor took no notice to her.  This shows how although women in the 19th century proclaimed they had rights, men did not acknowledge them.  Johnson, when looking at the list of patients in the Ireland asylum, found that although women made significantly less money in the 19th century, more women were admitted into private asylums than men.  This is because their husbands paid to send their wives to private asylums.  This shows how little power women had in society and the unequal economic disparity between men and women.   Men had a greater access to money due to higher paying jobs and their dominant role society.  In Scene in a Private Madhouse, Lewis repeatedly says, “I am not mad-I am not mad!” at the end of each stanza, but no one acknowledges her plea of sanity.  This shows male dominance in society and how women had no voice.  In the fourth stanza, Lewis says she is “Bereft of freedom,” which parallels to how women in the 19th century were deprived of social freedoms.  “I will be free! unbar the door!” Lewis proclaims in her sixth stanza which shows how women were determined to earn their social freedom.  Bly also talks about two women who were misrepresented in the asylum because of the dominant male authority of the time.  Tillie Mayard was diagnosed with depression, which was manageable and did not require incapacitation while Louise Schanza could not speak English and in result, could not defend herself in the asylum.  Both these women were stripped of the right to represent themselves and prove their sanity in the institution.    

Both Lewis and Bly talk about their male doctors in the asylum.  Lewis, in her second stanza, even characterizes her male doctor as her “jailer.” (362).  This not only shows how males held dominant roles in the asylum, but in society as well.  Johnson says, “information about a patient was sometimes provided by a relative [husband], sometimes the Sheridd, at other times by a caretaker or parish official.”  None of those listed were female, which shows the male dominance that was present and how women were viewed as inferior.  The male doctors also decided when the women patients got to leave the asylum, meaning they got to decide when, if at all, a woman had changed to fit the male view of societal norms.  Just as the male doctor decides the fate of the female patients, the men in the 19th century decided how many rights women could have.  In Lewis’ third stanza she explains how she was dependent on her male doctor for light, “His glimmering lamp, still, still I see-/ ‘Tis gone! and all is gloom again.”   Which shows how women were made to be dependent on men.  

By evaluating treatments given to women in 19th century asylums, a connection is evident between the text and the historical information along with a better grasp of how women were treated in society during that time. This included their lack of rights resulting from a male dominated world. Lewis and Johnson, despite analyzing the treatments in asylums in different European countries, give similar accounts to Nellie Bly, who went to an asylum in the United States.  The different texts shape the way we view the 19th century historically by proving society worldwide shared the believe that women were inferior.  By analyzing how women patients were given no opportunities to prove their sanity before being admitted into an asylum, a women’s lack of rights in the 19th century become evident.  Allowing society to enroll women in mad-houses against their will and without their permission shows how harsh societal norms were for women during this time period as well as how asylums were manipulated by society to get rid of women who didn’t follow these norms.  The male doctors having all power and deciding the fate of women patients, whether they ever got to leave or not, shows how the 19th century had a male dominated culture.  Overall, the three texts analyzing asylum treatments of the 19th century prove that women were deprived of equal treatment in a male based society.  
