In Ten Days in a Madhouse, Nelly Bly wrote about her experiences in a women’s insane asylum in 1887.  She faked her insanity to gain admittance so that she could learn of the conditions that the women were subjected to after hearing that the women it housed were not being treated well.  Nelly Bly lived as an inmate for ten days, and her book allowed for the horrific treatment of the women that lived there to be seen.  The institution was then investigated, and the policies regarding treatment of the mentally ill were changed.  Both the practice of phrenology and the woman’s rights movement during the 19th century help the reader to understand the context that surrounds Ten Days in a Madhouse and allows for a close reading of the story to reveal more about the book and the time in which it was written. 

Phrenology was a practice popularized during the 19th century that is now regarded as pseudoscience.  Phrenologists looked at their client’s heads, analyzing their size and shape, and then breaking down their brain into the different “phrenological faculties” that made it up.  “Phrenological faculties” was the term used for the character traits that the phrenologists assigned to each of the individual “organs” inside of the brain.  The diagrams phrenologists used show a diagram of a human head, with a brain that is divided up and filled with different traits that people would normally think of as simply character traits.  The different areas were considered individual organs that made up the singular brain.  After the popularization of this pseudoscience, the main clients of phrenologists became white, middle-class women.  This was because the practice allowed for its clients to ‘know themselves’ to a much better degree than before.  Because the women the phrenologists were teaching were middle class, they taught them to accept themselves for how they were in relation to the people who were considered worse off than they were.  They compared themselves to poor people as well as African Americans in order to feel content in themselves.  Women who didn’t completely fill the stereotypical role of a woman sought out phrenology because they could have many traits that were thought of as masculine, while still being able to identify with womanhood.  Women could understand themselves to a better degree through this practice, and accept themselves for who they were.  The inherent contradiction with phrenology however is that more of the possible personality traits were considered as masculine, such as intellect or strength.  Because more of the phrenological faculties were thought to be masculine leaning, there was no way that phrenology equated men to women.  (Bittel)

The women’s rights movement began in the early to mid-19th century and is an important part of the history of the United States. As more women began to demand for equal rights to men, the movement grew.  The biggest issue that women faced was that they lacked the right to vote. With a strong backing by the end of the century, women were able to organize their protest movement around the right to vote.  The women’s suffrage movement ended in 1920 when women finally received the right to suffrage, after a hard-fought battle that lasted decades.  During this time period, starting around the middle of the 1800s, authors began changing the way they depicted domesticity.  Many authors included the agitation that women felt towards their rights as individuals.  Most of the domestic changes authors included were focused on white, middle-class women, similar to the demographic of phrenology clients but with a heavier emphasis on those in the northeast.  This transformation happened because of the woman’s rights movement, but also helped to fuel it by bringing the issues women were fighting for to light.  The movement succeeded by the early 20th century, after decades of the suffragette movement, women received the right to vote.  (Egnal)

Phrenology and the women’s rights movement began to gain traction and popularity at the same time, in the mid-19th century.  Both of these events build the historical context that laid the groundwork for Nelly Bly’s book.  Women at the time were not considered equal to men on the legal level, but especially on the social level.  Phrenology goes to show that most of the character traits that people possess are determined to be masculine in nature.  Women are taught to accept who they are as a person, even if that means accepting that feminine qualities are thought of as lesser than their masculine counterparts.  The gender roles of the time were clearly defined, and the phrenology clients most likely ended up fighting in the woman’s suffrage movement.  Phrenologists’ clients were not only women, but the fact that most of them were women seeking acceptance in a world that subjugated them only gave more traction for the women’s rights movement.

Nelly Bly’s Ten Days in a Madhouse two decades before the peak of the women’s rights movement, when women were given the right to vote.  Phrenology and the women’s rights movement became popular during the same time period, and built the context that Nelly Bly’s book almost relies on.  Women at the time Ten Days in a Madhouse was written were not considered citizens on the same level men were.  Without the right to vote or basic property rights, women did not have much that they could do comparatively.  If a woman was deemed insane, she was sent to an insane asylum, without much thought or care put into listening to her argument for her sanity.  The doctors in the insane asylum would not listen to the inmates, even if they were pleading for their release, or even if they were sane in Nelly Bly’s case.  Because the women faced such harsh stereotyping, they could be placed in an insane asylum wrongly and never be able to leave.  Nelly Bly was an advocate for women’s rights and the rights of the mentally ill, but specifically women.  The women’s rights movement and phrenology were important historical movements that shaped culture and drastically change what can be understood by Nelly Bly’s story.

The women’s rights movement and phrenology ran parallel during the mid-19th century to the later parts of the century.  While phrenology was a pseudoscientific revolution, where women sought self-acceptance in the traits they possessed, the women’s rights movement was a push for social and especially legal rights that they lacked.  Nelly Bly’s book shows that women with mental illnesses during this time period were not treated well, in a time when women were already not treated the best.  The light that was shone on the atrocities that happen to the women in the insane asylum led to wide scale change.  The women’s rights movement and the feelings of the women who were clients of phrenology shone light on the inequalities that women faced, and after an organized fight for the right to vote, women were able to receive the rights that they had long desired.  The book that Nelly Bly wrote was shaped by this historical context, as she had grown up during this time, and become a writer while the movements were still gaining momentum.  The success of the women’s suffrage movement did not come until decades after her book had been published.  Ten Days in a Madhouse was shaped by the historical and cultural context provided by phrenology and the women’s rights movement, and causes her Nelly Bly’s book to have an even deeper connection with the reader because of those connections.
