
The piece Ten Days in a Mad House describes a woman who infiltrates a madhouse. During her time in the asylum, Bly experiences what daily life is like for women in the madhouse. The things she experiences show just how cruel the asylum staff are to the patients imprisoned in the asylum. The cruel nature of the nurses in the asylum is caused by the lack of power that the women experience in the real world. The cruel treatment that the nurses inflicted on the patients was a major contributor to the perception of insanity in the patients. If the nurses in the asylum possessed the ability to vote for the laws that they were governed by, and were granted the same power that men had, outside of the asylum, they would not have treated the women so terribly; without this terrible treatment the women residing in the asylum would have recovered from their “illness” and returned to normal life faster.

The piece Ten Days in a Mad House is about a young woman by the name of Nellie Bly. The story is a collection of articles written by Bly and compiled into a book that was later published. The story is written about the time that Bly spent ten days in an insane asylum on Blackwell’s Island. During her time in the mad house, Bly witnesses a number of instances where nurses in the asylum are unjustly cruel to the patients. Two examples of cruelty against the patients in the asylum are the refusal to give the patients proper clothing, and forcing the patients to bathe in cold baths. Bly recalls, “I think I experienced some of the sensations of a drowning person as they dragged me, gasping, shivering and quaking, from the tub.” This experience is one that would drive almost anyone crazy after prolonged exposure. If a person is constantly forced into an uncomfortable situation they are bound to lose their mind. The forceful and abusive actions committed by the nurses and doctors in the asylum lead to the patients becoming increasingly insane. At the end of the piece, Bly is almost convinced that she herself has gone mad due to the treatment she received from the Nurses in the asylum. They then abuse their power by forcing the women in the asylum to do things that were uncomfortable and abusive, which leads to the patients in the asylum losing their minds. 

In an article written by Jennifer Harris, she writes about the history of important and historic events in the battle for women’s rights. The article discusses all of the trials and tribulations that women in the time period went through just to obtain the right to contribute to the creation of laws that govern everyone the same. At the end of the piece there is a quote that reads “Place a woman in equal power, give her the privilege to cooperate in making the laws that she submits to and there will be harmony without severity and justice without oppression.” This quote was written by Lucretia Mott during the same time period that Nellie Bly wrote Ten Days in a Mad House. By including this quote from Mott, Harris is arguing that women should have the right to vote for and contribute to the selection of laws that they must be governed by. Harris’ piece also describes how women of the period did not legally have any property of their own. The fact that the women in this time period lack the power to vote as well the right to own their own property took a great toll on women in America. This emotional toll is what causes the nurses in the mad house to take out their frustrations and abuse what little power they have in the asylum. They refuse the women in the asylum basic necessities because they are denied basic rights in the world outside of their jobs. One instance of the nurses denying patients basic necessities is when a patient requests a blanket. Bly recalls a nurse responding to the patient’s request “At this I saw Miss Grupe sit down on her and run her cold hands over the old woman’s face and down the inside of her dress.” This act and other acts of abuse of power causes the women in the mad house to go even more mad as opposed to getting better. If the nurses had the same rights as men and the same say in the laws that govern the country, they would not have abused the small amount of power they experienced at the asylum, and the “mad” women in the asylum would have gotten better. 

Another source that proves that the nurses were abused is the book Women of The Asylum Voices From Behind The Wall, written by Jeffery L. Geller. This source is a collection of accounts from women who were accused of being insane and placed in mad houses, mostly by men in their lives. Most women that were admitted to asylums in the time period were placed there for acting outside the accepted role of a female. One account in this work is provided by Elizabeth T. Stone. In Stone’s account she describes the asylum as “a system worse than slavery.” Her account was from the early eighteen forties, three decades before Bly entered the asylum at Blackwell Island. This is significant as it shows just how poorly the asylum staff treated patients in mad houses in the united states. The nurses in the asylums were more directly associated with the patients than doctors and contributed more to the abuse of the females who were imprisoned in the mad houses. By including Stone’s experience and words Geller is highlighting how poorly the women in mad houses were treated. The fact that the word slavery was used as a way to describe the brutality that the women in the asylums shows just how bad the women had it. The nurses that worked in the asylum that Elizabeth T. Stone was placed in were just as abusive, if not more abusive, than the nurses in tenure at the Women’s Lunatic Asylum on Blackwell’s Island. Women across the country were affected by the lack of rights and basic freedoms. This lack of rights affected the way that nurses in asylums across the country treated their patients. If the women were granted the suffrage and rights they deserved, the nurses would not feel the need to take advantage of the small amount of power they had at work, and create the systems that Elizabeth T. Stone compared to slavery.  Without this feeling getting the better of the nurses, they would have treated the women in mad houses with much more respect and care than they did.

In the work Ten Days in a Mad House, Bly becomes close with some of the prisoners trapped within the asylum. Bly finds out that the nurses in the asylum consistently mistreat and abuse the patients in the women’s asylum. By the end of the piece Bly says that she has nearly gone insane after being treated the way she was during her short stay. The nurses treat the patients the way they do because in the real world, outside their jobs at the asylum, the nurses are denied equality with men. The lack of balance in equality during this time period is highlighted in Jennifer Harris’ piece Celebrating Women’s History: The Story of Seneca Fall. The powerless life that the nurses must live in outside of work makes the nurses crave power and search for power wherever they can find it. The nurses find this power on Blackwell Island while they are in charge of taking care of the women in the asylum. Instead of caring for the patients they use their power to abuse and mistreat the women, denying the women in the asylum the basic things they need to survive and get well. Their abuse of the women in the asylum is reminiscent of the abuse that the nurses experience in the real world. If the nurses were to have power in the real world, in the form of suffrage and the right to own property, they would not feel it necessary to overuse and abuse the power that their position at the asylum gives them. So in conclusion, if women in the time period were granted the equality in everyday life that they deserved, the nurses would have actually cared for the women in the asylum and the patients in the mad house would have actually gotten well and been released from the mad house. 
