Sadie Hinton

Professor Smith

Essay 3

November 7th 2016

Fitting the Mold

Women of the seventies and eighties were supposed to stay home, cook, clean and take care of the children while their husbands were at work. Due to these pressures, all of whom did not succumb to these norms were unnatural and needed help. At some points these women could be deemed “Mentally-ill”. The definition of a mentally-ill person has changed over the years to an extent by sharpening the focus. Back then being mentally-ill was a lot more common just because of how broad the scope was. Women with Alzheimer’s, Dementia, etc. were considered “crazy” instead of just sick like we see them today. Women that leaned more towards “manly-type” ways could be sent to the asylums just for not fitting the norm of the era. Not only was it easy to be sent to an insane asylum as woman, it was also awful to be in as a woman and almost impossible to get out. The review of Women and Madness by Carol Anne Douglas and Ten Days in A Madhouse by Nellie Bly are both shaped by the cultural ideals of the “cookie cutter” woman of the time period by exemplifying the unprecedented sentences, self-entitled doctors, false treatment, dehumanization.

Women and Madness was originally written by Phyllis Chesler in 1972 but it was later revised in 2005. During this age, men had so much power over the women in their lives that they could simply make up some arbitrary reason for why they should be admitted and they were in the clear. These women had no say. Even going slightly off the path created for them they could be punished, “Chesler writes about Elizabeth Packard, whose husband put her in a mental asylum in 1860 because she taught her Sunday school class that people are born good, not evil.” (Douglas 71). Women were treated as property and could most definitely been thrown out at the drop of a hat for just about anything. This was most likely the case because the majority of households were kept together by the income of the male-figure. Since women rarely were given the opportunity to work, the men had more power in the sense that they brought home the money. Chesler highlights how further back even outside of America men would discard of their wives just for not wanting them anymore, “Starting in France in the 16th century, many husbands institutionalized wives who had become inconvenient to them.” (Douglas 71). The list goes on and on for reasons why women could be sent to institutions by their husbands, fathers, brothers, and grandfathers back then but mainly just because of the lack of rights women had and the strict molds they were told to fit. 

Not only were women treated like property and mistreated outside of the institutions, they were also treated poorly within the institutions. Just as one women would be told to cook and clean at home like a “normal wife”, she would also be made to do so inside of these asylums, “State institutions also forced women to do work like cooking and cleaning and punish them with beatings and longer forced institutionalization if they refuse” (Douglas 71). These places were also known for using inhuman items to torture or, as they would call it, “heal” their inmates, like, chains, handcuffs, and straitjackets. There was even a point at which, Adriana Brinckle, a woman that Chesler had written about earlier in the text said “An insane asylum. A place where insanity is made.” This alone just goes to show how a perfectly normal woman can be sent into an asylum for unknown and unfair reasons and end up becoming insane just because of how poorly she was treated during her stay. Ironically, these insane asylums are supposed to be helping women but in the end they just ruin them. These women, if actually insane, need the correct treatment like therapy and medicine instead of just being hit and restrained like animals.

Chesler was mainly investigating these ideas from an outsider’s point of view but Nellie Bly, author of Ten Days in A Madhouse, actually dives right into the problems itself. She admitted herself into the Women’s Lunatic Asylum by pretending to be insane. Through this she was able to first-hand see how women were being treated for being “insane” and expose it to the rest of the world. Although her journal entries focus more heavily on the treatment of the mentally-ill in general, since she was in an all-women’s facility she was able to highlight on the specific poor female treatment throughout. In Ten Days in A Madhouse, Nellie validates the fact that women could easily be sent to insane asylums, “‘Are you crazy?’ I asked ‘No,’ she replied; ‘but as we have been sent here we will have to be quiet until we find some means of escape. They will be few, though, if all the doctors, as Dr. Field, refuse to listen to me or give me a chance to prove my sanity.’” (Bly 281).  In this conversation a fellow inmate confesses to Bly the truth behind the system. Women were not respected and especially not if they were being considered insane. Doctors, like Dr. Field, were mostly men and with being a man came unwarranted pompous attitude towards the women that were deemed lower than them. Society automatically assumes that all females are feeble and not capable of having more control than male because of how much smaller females usually are and there lack of freedom dating all the way back to when women could not vote. Because of these stigmas they are treated lesser although they are not.

Not only were these women taken away from their freedom and belittled by their caretakers, they were also made to live in such poor living conditions and treated like animals. When Bly encounters her first meal, she is baffled. “’it is impossible for me to eat that stuff,’ I replied, and, despite all her urging, I ate nothing that night.’” (Bly 286). Bly would rather starve than eat the food she was given which says a lot about the quality of food given to the inmates. Along with horrendous food, they treated the women like children when bathing them in nothing but cold water. “…From a small tin pan she took some soft soap and rubbed it all over me, even all over my face and pretty hair. I was at last past seeing or speaking…my teeth chattered and my limbs were goose-fleshed and blue with cold...” (Bly 287). With this brief description of her experience one can only imagine the torture she had to go through. Even though she was considered insane, she still had the right to a warm, soothing bath. The women were almost treated as though they were too incompetent to even understand or feel how cold the water was so it didn’t matter to their caretakers. When anyone would complain or ask for something upon request they would snap back at them incessantly. Before bed Bly asked if she could have a night-gown, “’We had not 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.’” (Bly 287). In this moment, it is clear that anyone of a “higher” status could say just about anything to these “crazy” women whom were so “undeserving”. In regards to all the awful treatment these women had to face, it is disheartening knowing just because they were women who may or not be crazy, they could be treated poorly in these institutes.

Treatment of women has not always been how it is today. It wasn’t always easy to gain respect, get a job, have a life, and so on because of the unfair stereotypes and pressures that were put on women. By being forced to cook, clean and stay at home, women weren’t ever given the chance to truly be free. When the men got a taste of this power they could easily abuse it. Sending their wives, sisters, or mothers to insane asylums was so easy because of their higher status in that day of society. Overall, these two pieces of text, Women and Madness and Ten Days In A Madhouse, were both heavily influenced and sculpted by the surrounding pressures on women in that culture that always led to the degrading treatment within and without the institutions.

Work Cited

Bly, Nellie. “Ten Days in A Madhouse.” “The Carolina Reader, edited by Ben Harley, NicoleFisk, 2016, pp. 281-297

Douglas, Carol Anne. “Women and Madness.” Off Our Backs, vol. 36, no. 2, 2006, pp. 71–73www.jstor.org/stable/20838616.