Nellie Bly’s Ten Days in a Madhouse and Charlotte Gilman’s The Yellow Wallpaper were written only five years apart and both discuss the care and treatment of women’s mental illness. Bly’s investigative journalism is a detailed description of her stay in an insane asylum on Blackwell’s Island. Gilman’s fictional short story is based from her own experience with post-partum depression and the treatment of the “rest cure”. In both works the women are being told that they do not understand what is going on in their own minds and there is a mentality of “doctor knows best”. At first glance these two writings seem dramatically different, but underlying it all is the issue around women’s health in a male dominated society and that as time has passed the issue transferred from not only mental health, but specifically into reproductive health.

Women’s issues seem to always be a hot topic among healthcare and the government. Issues that are extremely sensitive and volatile are discussed at dinner and on television constantly. Instead of leaving medical decisions to the women they effect, there are the prying eyes and opinions of everyone around. In The Yellow Wallpaper we never read a definitive diagnosis of Jane’s condition, this along with the patronizing way Jane’s husband treats her condition further enforces the idea that he knows better for her than she does (Treichler). A new word has sprung up recently to describe politicians who continue to push radical restrictions on women’s reproductive health, gynoticians. These, typically male, politicians try to enforce dangerous and restrictive laws on clinics to prevent women from getting the treatment they need. Without any medical degree, they cite false and disproved studies in an act to restrict women. Much like in Bly’s Ten Days in a Madhouse, the mental and physical well-being of women is not being considered when TRAP, targeted regulation of abortion providers, laws are passed. Just like the doctors Bly talked to the women these laws directly concern are overlooked and told to be quiet. 

One issue this election cycle has not focused enough attention on is the absence of a supreme court justice. Since Justice Antonin Scalia’s death earlier this year, there have only been eight justices. The two main contenders for the presidency have drastically different opinions on who should fill the vacant seat. Donald Trump has said that he will place a justice who will “do away with federal abortion rights, returning the issue of abortion over to the states” (Matt). Personally, I do not understand the countries obsession with what goes on with a woman’s body, but it’s not going away anytime soon. Much like Bly’s investigative journalism exposed the nature of mental hospitals’ treatment of its patients, it’s going to take a serious expose to challenge the government’s authority over women. In Ten Days in a Madhouse and The Yellow Wallpaper the underlying tone was that the doctors knew better for the patients and in the present time there is an underlying tone of the government knows what’s best for women. 

Mental health and reproductive health are both extremely sensitive topics yet the media portrays them in such crass ways. People who commit mass shootings are often labeled as mentally ill, if they’re white, this stigmatizes all mentally ill people. There was a stigma around Jane in The Yellow Wallpaper, she hid her mental illness to portray the image of a perfect wife and mother. According to Peter Byrne, self-stigmatization causes shame which overrides the most extreme symptoms (Byrne). Jane’s own feelings of shame could have dwarfed her depression and by ripping back the wallpaper she was finally able to expose to herself what she was feeling and free herself. Much like the stigma around mental health patients, there is a stigma around women who get abortions. There is a stereotype that says women who get abortions do so without thinking of the consequences, that they take the easy way out, and that they shouldn’t have sex if they cannot deal with the punishment. This fails to consider the fact that most abortions are provided to women who have already had children. It’s a double-edged sword for unmarried women and women under an acceptable age to have children. If they have an abortion they’re shamed, but if they have the baby they are also shamed. There’s no “good” way to describe it.  You’re damned if you do and damned if you don’t.

While these two works are very similar, there are still some differences that change the perspectives in these stories. In The Yellow Wallpaper, Jane is meek and subjects herself to her husband’s wishes. She doesn’t speak out against him when he disagrees with her feelings. Nellie Bly is outspoken and goes up against the mean nurses time and time again for the other patients in the mental hospital. One of the first women she encounters tries to get the doctors to listen to her and acknowledge that she is not crazy. Nellie speaks up for this patient and for the sick patient who cannot get a doctor to look at her. In this investigative journalism, it paints the picture that the women in the asylum were not crazy to begin with, but constant interaction with harsh people and harsh environments drives them to insanity to cope with the cruel reality of the situation. This is another similarity with The Yellow Wallpaper, Jane’s doctor husband refuses to change the wallpaper in the bedroom and to cope with her disgust of the pattern she envisions a woman creeping around behind it and it’s not until it is ripped back that she is freed.  

Nellie Bly’s expose wasn’t the first look into the horrors of early psychiatric care in America just like Charlotte Gilman’s story isn’t the first about women’s mental health. Dorthea Dix was an advocate for the mentally ill in the 1840s and Elizabeth Packard’s account was published four years before Nellie Bly’s article (Sobsey). The fact that not much had changed between Dix, Packard, Bly shows how little the patriarchy believed the women. Much like today, with women speaking out for reproductive writes there were women who were against changing the way the psychiatric facilities treated the women. The nurses in the asylums are like the female pro-life protestors, they’ve been told by a patriarchal that thinking sexual freedom is something to be ashamed of. In religion women are shamed for being sexual in any way, and that shows through when prolife activists cite the Bible or any religious work as a valid argument. Forget about separation of church and state at that point.

Not only are Ten Days in a Madhouse and The Yellow Wallpaper similar in arguments, they are also relevant to today’s discussion of reproductive rights. Both writing feature women who understand mental instability and are not being taken seriously. The stigma they both face as women and as women in a “shameful” situation is immense. People with mental illnesses are less stigmatized today, but there is still a feeling that it is bad to acknowledge it. These firsthand accounts did not change much at the time about mental healthcare much like things have not changed all that much surrounding women’s healthcare. The shame and stigma around abortion prevent an honest conversation about it. Two main differences appear in these writings. First, Nellie Bly’s account is a nonfiction investigative journalism expose and Charlotte Gilman’s is a fiction retelling of her own situation. Another difference is that Jane, the character in The Yellow Wallpaper, is experiencing postpartum depression and her husband refuses to acknowledge it so it gets left untreated. Nellie Bly goes into the madhouse a completely sane individual and even her obvious health doesn’t get recognized and she’s labeled as insane even though she isn’t’. 
