The story “10 Days in a Madhouse,” by Nellie Bly can be a difficult story to understand. Going into the story with no background knowledge could prove to be a little arduous, not knowing the treatment of the mentally ill at the time and also the treatment of women during that time period. Having background knowledge is imperative to fully understanding and appreciating the story and what all it entails, and the reader will also have a deep respect for Nellie Bly after understanding all the hardships she went through for the writing of this story. 

The first example of background knowledge aiding in the understanding of the story is the treatment of women during the year this story was written, 1887. Women had very few rights at that time and were expected to act in a certain way. If women acted differently than the role they were supposed to play, they were assumed to be crazy. This reason alone got a large amount of            women sent to insane asylums even though there was nothing wrong with them at the time. Once sent to an insane asylum, the person was not allowed to leave until the person in charge deemed them sane. Often times women were met with cruelty since many men found women to be inferior. If a woman ever acted up, she would be punished by being sent to solitary confinement, or harsh physical treatment such as hair pulling or being beaten (History of Mental Health Treatment). This horrible treatment can be seen in “Ten Days in a Madhouse” multiple times. One example in the book was when the nurses were tormenting one of the patients. Eventually the patient snapped and began crying. As Bly wrote in the story, “they had gotten all the amusement out of her they wanted… they pounced upon her and slapped her face… this made the poor creature cry more, and so they chocked her… I plainly saw the marks of their fingers on her throat for the entire day” (Bly 297). At times, they would beat the patients for no reason, with one patient “sitting harmlessly chattering to herself. They grabbed her... by her grey hair and dragged her shrieking and pleading from the room” (Bly 297). Having background knowledge of this brutality helps the reader comprehend the terror and dangers they women faced at the time, and then that fear is reinforced through Nellie Bly’s depiction of her experience. By understanding how women were viewed at the time and in turn how they were treated in insane asylums, the reader can better understand why Nellie Bly and the other women of “Ten Days in a Madhouse” were treated so cruelly. 

The second example of background knowledge assisting in the understanding of “10 Days in a Madhouse” would be the living conditions of insane asylums. While there were some insane asylums that were nice and patients got the treatment and help they needed, many of those asylums were very expensive. If a person was sentenced to an asylum and could not afford it, they were sent to the inexpensive asylums. Since no one understood mental illnesses and how to treat them, people were often sent away just to ignore the problem. Today’s asylums are kept clean and are quite safe and secure, creating a calming and welcoming environment. However, back in the time the story was written, asylums were built to hold large amounts of people. Because they sacrificed safety and for more cells, they were dangerous and overcrowded. One of these safety concerns was brought up in “Ten Days in a Madhouse” was the locks for the patient’s cells. While there were more efficient and safer ways of locking the cells, the builders built the asylum so “every door [was] locked separately and the windows [were] heavily barred, so that escape was impossible” (Bly 288). In the story, Bly began to ponder all the ways this system could go wrong. One of those scenarios was a fire. Because each door had to be unlocked individually and the staff did not care about the patients, they would not take the time to free them and all the patients would burn to death (Bly 288). Having background information on cheap asylums would help the reader better understand why the asylums were built that way, and how the owners of the asylum were building it in mind of space rather than safety. Another important aspect that was cut due to funding was cleanliness. In the story, Bly’s experience with taking a bath was traumatizing. They striped her of her clothes and had an insane old woman with a discolored rag scrub her down while she stood in a bathtub filled with freezing cold water. When the old woman was done, they dumped three more buckets of freezing water over her head. Bly says in the book that she, “experienced the sensations of drowning as they dragged me, gasping, shivering, and quaking, from the tub. For once I did look insane” (Bly 287). The background information lines up perfectly with Bly’s story, furthering the readers grasp the horrible conditions of these asylums. Based on pictures and drawings of public asylums from that time, asylums were grey and depressing (Worcester State and Rochester New York Insane Asylums). It would terrify anyone that saw one, and being sentenced to such a dark, unwelcoming place would be enough to drive one crazy. Nellie Bly claimed that, “it would be [easier] to walk to the gallows than to this tomb of living horrors” (Bly, 281). Bly uses the comparison or walking to her death rather than staying here to help understand the level of terror and fear these asylums would strike into people. Having background information on what these asylums looked like would paint the reader a clearer picture of what these buildings looked like. By understanding how public insane asylums looked during the time “Ten Days in a Madhouse” was written, the reader can better understand the terror a person felt after being sentenced to a place like that. 

The third example of how background knowledge helps with the comprehension of the text is how doctors tried to cure mental illnesses during the 1800’s and early 1900’s. Because technology was not as nearly developed as it is today, mental illness was still vastly misunderstood. This lack of understanding led to some strange and bizarre treatments. Between the years 1888 to 1939, an Austrian neurologist and psychiatrist, Sigmund Freud, believed that the mind was made up of the three different parts. These three parts consisted of the id, the ego, and the super ego. Freud believed that anxiety or other mental problems were caused from the three parts battling each other. He also thought that the only way to cure this mental illness was for the individual to revel what was going on in subconscious through hypnosis (Foerschner). There was a number of other scientists with their own treatments around at the time, ranging from removing parts of the brain to shock therapy. Some doctors just believed that the illness would go away after enough time had passed, such as Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper.” In the story, the women was sentenced to remain in a yellow room with hardly any other human contact until the doctor thought she was cured of her illness. Because she remained in solitary confinement for so long, the loneliness and boredom eventually drove her insane (Charlotte). That method, along with all the other methods mentioned beforehand, proved to be ineffective and at times made patients worse off from when they began. This same method was seen in “Ten Days in a Madhouse,” when the patients were told to sit and wait on benches. Nellie Bly explained the situation by saying, “take a perfectly sane and healthy woman, shut her up and make her sit from 6 A.M. until 8 P.M on straight-back benches, do not allow her to talk or move during these hours, give her no reading…” (Bly, 293) and so on. The point she was clearly trying to make was bordom does not help the mind, but makes people restless puts them in a worse state that they were in before, confirming the information from the background knowledge. By knowing the strange sciences they used to treat the mentally ill, the reader can better understand how patients were being treated at the time “Ten Days in a Madhouse” was written. 

In conclusion, to fully understand and appreciate what happened in Nellie Bly’s “Ten Days in a Madhouse,” the reader must first do research before reading. By knowing how women were treated, the structures of the public asylums, and the treatments of the mentally ill during the late 1800’s and early 1900’s, the reader will better understand just what Nellie Bly had to go through for the writing of that story. Background information is essential to fully appreciate what a story is trying to convey, and also gives the story much more meaning by knowing exactly what the author is talking about. 
