During the nineteenth century, insane asylums housed the mentally ill in society. However, not all who were imprisoned were truly insane. During this time, those declared “insane” were also those who were meant to be kept out of the eye of the public. It turns out, women were those affected most by this social stigma. The roles of women in insane asylums during the nineteenth century was that of imprisonment, belittlement, and oppression of their femininity. Nellie Bly, in Ten Days in a Mad-House, placed herself in the situation to face these struggles head on while being an undercover investigator. Nellie was not the only person to notice these discrepancies in the care being received. Debjani Das wrote a journal telling of the same problems that women faced in these asylums during the nineteenth century. Jean Lutes also wrote an article describing the effect of stunt reporting that resulted from Nellie Bly’s “Ten Days in a Mad House” and how this provided a breakthrough for decades in news stories from women. 

Up until almost the end of the twentieth century, women’s rights have been infringed upon in multiple aspects of life. One of the biggest time periods that these practices have been noted was during the late nineteenth century in insane asylums. Social norms were for women to stay at home while the men went out and were the bread winners. Any actions outside of the social norms lead to alternate treatment for these women. Those who were admitted to insane asylums were those of lower class, without money or means by which family could “help” quietly. Mainly the population of the asylums “included beggars, coolies, cultivators, laborers, fisherwomen, housewives, prostitutes, by 1870s there were also references of insane women who prior to their admission worked as domestic servants, washerwomen, shopkeepers, and weavers…” Usually, the lower class of society made up much of the population in these asylums. This also lead to abuse of power from the staff over the women. One of those abuses of power was oppression of sexuality and femininity. Bly often mentions in “Ten Days in a Mad House” that the women were stripped of their personal clothing, not allowed to bathe, or brush their own hair, and even forced to wear certain clothes to break their individuality. The implementation of these regulations to create a feeling of despair between the women. 

Insanity during the nineteenth century was a grey area for the medical community. Not much was to be known about it other than what society perceived as “not normal” or “crazy”. However, there was a gap between men who were declared insane and women who were declared insane. “Intoxication was considered as one of the most significant causes of insanity among men. Although the asylum reports often stated the number of women whose causes of intemperance was assigned to substance consumption, however, the officials did not consider it as a major cause of insanity among women” (Das 27). Although, this was not true for all patients admitted into asylums, which lead to several people being admitted due to substance abuse including different types of drugs and alcohol. In both cases of drugs and alcohol, more men than women were seen to suffer from the effects of this. There were often relapses in the substance abuse once the patients were discharged they returned soon later to be admitted again. It was considered a social taboo for women which was put into the minds of society to help push the idea of feminine norms. When women were brought into the asylum with insanity induced from substance abuse, it was kept quieter than if it was “a normal insanity” issue. The substance abuse in women took away from the ideal view of the traditional high class Victorian woman. 

There was another prominent issue that occurred in insane asylums during the nineteenth century, false diagnoses, and false information. When patients were admitted into the institution, family members often did not accompany them or even any person who knew their baseline mentality or medical history. In Bly’s account, “Many visitors looking for missing girls came to see me” (Bly 296). This just shows that women would be locked up in these asylums without notifying any family or friends. The fact that “many” visitors came to see her can only put this into small perspective of the actuality of the times that women are removed from their home. 

Nellie Bly wrote “Ten Days in a Mad House” after committing herself to an insane asylum pretending to be mentally insane. She got this idea after her father suddenly died and her mother had fourteen children plus Bly, and was left with no claim to his estate, giving her the mentality she possesses about women’s rights. By adopting the mindset of the hysteric female and the body image of those diagnosed with hysteria Bly created her own version as a witness to the horrors that women faced in these asylums during the nineteenth century. Per Jean Lutes from The John Hopkins University Press, when Bly was “impersonating insanity allowed her to flaunt the very characteristics that were being used to bar women from city newsrooms: her female ness, her emotional expressiveness, her physical-even her explicitly sexual-vulnerability” (Lutes 218). Not only was this to pursue the rumors about how women were being treated, this fed her imagination into which she could not act upon in society. With the stigma that was placed on the ways that women were “supposed” to act in public, it was hard for her to be a reporter yet trying to accessing creativity needed to perform at the level of the men in the same field of work. The work of Bly became popular during the American mass culture movement and showing a new level of stunt reporting in America. This new level of stunt reporting gave the women of this time confidence to pursue a more in depth level in stunt reporting. However, despite their popularity, these acts of new stunt reporting were shielded from the media because of the heavy influence of the masculine prevalence in the news rooms. The rugged masculine figure that was portrayed in reporting was contrasted by this new girl stunt reporter that was on the rise because of Bly’s actions in her undercover work. 

Mental illness remained a grey area in society just because of the socially acceptable norms that were placed upon women during the nineteenth century. Often women were considered the lower class compared to the men. They were expected to stay at home, take care of the house, children, cook, clean, and rarely ever worked. Yet, when a woman did work, the value of their work was significantly diminished from what the men would produce. After Nellie Bly went undercover into an insane asylum to discover how women were being treated, the era of women stunt reporting sparked drastically. However, Bly’s undercover adventure was not meant to spark the era of stunt reporting, she did this to help uncover the way that women were being treated in these asylums. Jean Lutes and Debjani Das describe their relation to new reporting and the treatment of women during the nineteenth century, respectfully, in context with Nellie Bly’s “Ten Days in a Mad House”. In using the outside texts, the context to which how the treatment of women occurred in insane asylums, can be seen, and factually backed through Jean Lutes and Debjani Das. Women are often referred to as inferior to men and it has been this way for decades. Nothing changed when it came to the treatment of mental illness or supposed mental illnesses in women during the late nineteenth century. 
