In Nellie Bly’s, Ten Days in a Madhouse, she explores cultural themes of dehumanization, infantilization, and gender roles. Living in the late 1800s and early 1900’s, Bly was born and raised in a society filled with stigma around women and their “hysteria”. She was surrounded by man always having the upper hand, and women always struggling to follow along. Bly has always has strong views for women’s rights, as her father died when she was a young and her mother was left to support the family and raise fifteen children, without any legal support. By going undercover as an inmate at the Women’s Lunatic Asylum on Blackwell’s Island she saw, and experienced, first hand the horrible treatment the inmates had to endure. Even though Bly did not suffer from any mental illness, she was able to fake her way into the asylum and believed to be “insane” while she was there. Even if she had not been insane before, the treatment she endured was enough to drive anyone crazy. 

The most horrific culture to me in the asylum was that of dehumanization, the doctor and nurses have no regard for those people, or their well being, because they are “ill”. Automatically, these people are put at a drastically lower level, because they are not “normal”. These people who need to be cared for, are being abused, and it is utterly sick. The definition of being mentally ill is ever changing, and everyone has their own perception of it. The patients do not decide for themselves that they are sick and they do not decide how to be treated and cared for. Instead their self worth is eliminated and their say is taken from them. The doctor and nurses speak to each other using their “Christian” and “baptismal” names, while they call the patients by their patient names, further separating themselves from the ill. By taking away the patients names it eliminates their self worth and makes them feel lost. This is also prevalent in the cold baths when the nurses scrub the inmates very hard, as if they are trying to scrub away the crazy. Lastly, even though Bly, or Brown in this text, is able to read the scale when the nurse cannot, she is still seen as lesser than the incapable nurse, these degrading features that are so rampant in the asylum depict the dehumanizing culture.

Similarly to this culture of dehumanization, is one of Infantilization, as the nurses and doctors treat the patients as children, practically turning them into a child. They are taught that they cannot think or speak for themselves. They are unable to take care of themselves. They do not know what they need. It is all up to their superiors, the healthy. The organization of the asylum is similar to that of an elementary school, the inmates are told to “Stop at the heater…, and get in line two by two…, stand still” (285). These are orders similar of those given to young children in school hallway or cafeteria. This treatment reduces the patient’s agency, they are no longer able to do things for themselves, and they become passive and dependent. They learn that their opinions do not matter. Strangely, the nurses refer to this institution as a “charity,” because it is funded by the city, so the patients “should be thankful for what (they) get” (287). Usually one thinks of charity, as something that is motivated by goodness and funded by people who want to help make things better, this use of the word is a contradiction, as the inmates are given the bare minimum that they need to survive. Nonetheless, the patients have to do as they are told and deal with what little they have because they are dependent on an outside source. By being treated as children, they are dependent on the nurses and doctors to take care of them and know what is best for them, and hope that they will get better.

Lastly there is culture of gender roles. This culture puts men and people of high social standing about the mentally ill. The patients at the asylum are checked in by a doctor, who they are brought to by their husband. Obviously the man knows what he is doing, being male of the superior gender, and clearly doctors know what they are doing because they went through so much school, they must be smart. Nurse and doctors wear different informs from the patients and society in general to remind us of their power. Their scrubs and white coats make us listen to them and believe what they tell us. The inmates want to be better, and they believe that the doctors know how to do that, so they just go along with it, hoping they can cure the “insanity.” Once the patient is diagnosed, their personality becomes a function of their diagnosis. The longer they are ill, the more they see themselves that way and truly embody their illness. The patient’s insanity is never self-diagnosed; it always comes from that outside source, the man or the doctor. Everyone has a different interpretation of insanity, and the perception of reality to the ill individual is different than that of everyone else who is “normal.” 

This oppression, this treatment, and these cultures that are associated with mental illness do more harm than good. Patients are more insane before they go into an asylum than when they come out, if they ever come out. The longer they are treated like children or animals or prisoners, the harder it will be for them to adjust back into a normal lifestyle. 
