In the late 1800’s, women were treated as though they were property to men. Women had no responsibilities other than taking care of their children and household duties. But women wanted so much more than that. Women wanted to hold a job but society saw them as unequal to men. Even worse, men would not listen to women. The most eye opening example of this is when male doctors in the late 1800’s would misdiagnose their female patients because they did not listen to women. In Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s short story “The Yellow Wallpaper,” she addresses emotional abuse of women in marriages, and by doctors, based on her own experiences. Nellie Bly takes matters into her own hands after hearing horror stories about women in mental hospitals and starts to investigate. She writes her story, “Ten Days In A Madhouse,” by explaining that she admitted herself into a mental institute and how she, and the other patients, were mistreated during the time she was in a mental facility. While looking at these two texts, they seem to not have much relevance, but when digging deeper, we can see the worth of women by the way men acted towards them in each of these texts because men abused the mental wellbeing of women.

In the 1800’s, women did not have the same rights that men did. Although women’s rights movements were coming about and feminism was becoming popular, men still did not accept women as anything more than housewives. Women having wandering minds was a scary thought for important men in society. Males could not be taken off their pedestal.  This was a terrible issue for women especially when they needed, or didn't need medical attention. In “The Yellow Wallpaper,” the narrator’s husband, who was also her doctor, medically abused her. Her husband of high standing diagnosed her with temporary nervous depression and a high nervous tendency (Harley 300). The narrator knows something else is wrong with her but her husband does not listen. The narrator says the treatment her husband demanded was “phospates or phosphates… and tonics, or journeys, and air, and exercise, and [she] is absolutely forbidden to work until [she] is well again” (Harley 300).  Women were taught over and over again that they were mentally ill. They “go insane after being told time after time that [they] already [are]. Some people are born mad, some achieve madness, but women have madness thrust upon them” (Dana). Women in the 1800’s were definitely the victims of the male ego. 

In Nellie Bly’s documentary about her time in the madhouse, her goal of this experiment was to stay in the asylum until she got as much information as she needed. The male doctors in the asylum would not listen to her character, “Nelly Brown,” when she was telling them she was not insane. The doctor was abusing his power and just keeping the females in the mental prison. Granted, some of the women in the insane asylum were definitely mentally ill and needed to be kept in there but a few were sane and had no one to talk with to help them get out. One of the ladies in the asylum, Miss Tillie Mayard, was confused why she was sent to the mental hospital so she asked the male doctor. Miss Tillie said, ”if you know anything at all," she responded, "you should be able to tell that I am perfectly sane. Why don't you test me?” Then the doctor responded, ‘"We know all we want to on that score," said the doctor, and he left the poor girl condemned to an insane asylum, probably for life, without giving her one feeble chance to prove her sanity’ (Harley 288). The doctor did not give the woman a chance to talk to prove her sanity. He was so power drunk that he did not recognize the poor woman was actually sane and needed to be released. No one really expected men in the 1800s to listen to women though, because if they did, they might be proven wrong.

In both of the readings, the men were the main contributing factors to the mental illnesses of the women. The men abused the women both mentally and physically while they were in the facilities. In the Yellow Wallpaper, the doctor/the narrators husband, does not believe there is anything wrong with her, when she knows there is. He does not treat her the proper way or give her the correct attention she needs. “This wise man put me to bed and applied the rest cure, to which a still-good physique responded so promptly that he concluded there was nothing much the matter with me, and sent me home with solemn advice to "live as domestic a life as far as possible," to "have but two hours' intellectual life a day," and "never to touch pen, brush, or pencil again" as long as I lived. This was in 1887” (Gilman). This was not the answer that the narrator needed. In her story, the narrator says, “I think sometimes that if I were only well enough to write a little it would relieve the press of ideas and rest me” (Harley 300). Writing is the only thing the narrator believes would keep her sane but it is also what the doctor absolutely will not allow. The misdiagnosis of the narrators condition could ultimately have aided in her becoming more ill. Also, the narrator is not allowed to see her friends or family because it could stimulate her brain and affect her health from improving. “I sometimes fancy that in my condition if I had less opposition and more society and stimulus—but John says the very worst thing I can do is to think about my condition, and I confess it always makes me feel bad” (Harley 300). This could also be one of the main factors for the narrators illness. Her husband did not take the time to diagnose her properly so one of his so called cures called for the narrator to sit in her room away from any guests that could stimulate her. This is arguably one of the main sources that sustained the narrator’s illness. Without writing about her feelings or talking to anyone, how would the doctor ever expect the narrator to get any better?

In Ten Days In A Madhouse, Nelly Brown did everything she could to get herself admitted into the asylum but she did not expect how hard it would be to get out. Not only was it hard to convince the doctors of her sanity, but she was being physically abused while at the island, in the mince of trying to stay sane. One of Nelly’s first experiences of this was her first bath. She says, “my teeth chattered and my limbs were goose-fleshed and blue with cold. Suddenly I got, one after the other, three buckets of water over my head – ice-cold water, too – into my eyes, my ears, my nose and my mouth. I think I experienced the sensation of a drowning person as they dragged me, gasping, shivering and quaking, from the tub. For once I did look insane” (Harley 287). They weren't just treated Brown like she was insane, they were also going against many human rights she had and torturing her and the other women. Another account that Nelly wrote said, “what, excepting torture, would produce insanity quicker than this treatment? . . . Take a perfectly sane and healthy woman, shut her up and make her sit from 6 a.m. to 8 p.m. on straight-back benches, do not allow her to talk or move during these hours, give her no reading and let her know nothing of the world or its doings, give her bad food and harsh treatment, and see how long it will take to make her insane. Two months would make her a mental and physical wreck” (Harley 284). At this point in time, Nelly had given up her insane woman act and had started to explain herself as a sane woman, because this was terrifying. She finally got out but the mental and physical abuse she endured from the males in the asylum stayed with her forever. 

Both of these stories opened the eyes of America and started to change our country forever. Two days after Nellie Bly was released, her article titled Behind Asylum Bars was published in the news all over the country. The doctors who were named in this article offered up their apologies to Bly. “A month after her [article] ran, Bly returned to Blackwell’s with a grand jury panel. In her book, she says that when they made their tour, many of the abuses she reported had been corrected: the food services and sanitary conditions were improved, the foreign patients had been transferred, and the tyrannical nurses had disappeared. Her mission was accomplished” (DeMain). The Yellow Wallpaper also opened the eyes of America and the mental abuse that women were enduring from their husbands in society. Since this was based on real events that happened in Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s life, many other women were experiencing these things and it was a definite issue that needed to be fixed. This helped spark feminism and women’s rights and changed the way women were viewed. Both of these texts showed how women were abused by men and helped change this country forever.
