Nellie Bly, the author of Ten Days in a Mad-House was a women’s rights activist and reporter in the late 1800s. Nellie Bly’s views on women’s rights were solidified when Bly’s father died and her mother had no legal claims to anything. Bly’s mother, a mother to fifteen children lost her house and property because women had no rights. As a young woman in 1887, Bly pretended to be insane and committed herself to an insane asylum for ten days before they discovered she was sane and then Bly published Ten Days in a Mad-House to expose the horrible treatment of psychiatric patients. By looking at society’s views on women and the lack of understanding for mental illness in the late 1800s, one can see how these views would reflect on the care of female mental patients as seen in Nellie Bly’s Ten Days in a Mad-House.  

During the time Bly committed herself to the insane asylum, women had little to no rights. In the “Editor’s Introduction: Marie Howland—19th Century Leader for Women’s Economic Independence”, Marie Howland, a women’s rights activist, suffragist, and feminist of the same time period, expands on how society thought of women and how the treatment of women would have shaped asylums at the time. Howland focused her efforts on “socialism, economic equity, an end to “separate spheres” for men and women, liberation from sexual oppression and double standards” by publishing a novel and short stories to get her messages out. The article about Howland concentrates most on her work about the economic problems women face in the late 1800s. Howland was outraged about how society was “training young girls in the arts of flattery” in order to “snare a husband who could provide economic security”. In the article this is referred to as “rent-seeking behavior” because women are economically dependent on men, either being their fathers, brothers, or husbands (“Editor’s Introduction: Marie Howland—19th Century Leader for Women’s Economic Independence”). Women had to solely rely on the men in their lives for stability because women were seen as secondary citizens. Men had jobs, owned the property and the houses, and even if the husband were to die, the wife would not earn the property, the property would go to the next man in the family. Society at the time did not have the capacity to understand women’s rights, diagnosing women who did not follow in this normal behavior as insane.  

Society was strict on women, seeing any “radical” behavior of women was strongly looked down upon and seen as “insanity” because “society” was made of rich, white men.  These men wanted obedient “prisoners” according to the article, and shameful situations were considered private so husbands could commit their wives to asylums if they were too “sexual”, had cheated, or challenged gender roles. Howland’s work included that of the gender double standard, like instances when men were socially accepted if they cheated, but women could be committed to mental hospitals if they did the same (“Editor’s Introduction: Marie Howland—19th Century Leader for Women’s Economic Independence”). 

In Nellie Bly’s experience in the asylum she recalled a woman who begged to have a chance to prove her sanity. The woman was “taken without her own consent from the free world” without even a chance to prove her sanity. Bly compared this to a “criminal who is given every chance to prove his innocence”. Not only is Bly comparing the mental institution to a prison, but she calls the prisoner in the comparison “he”, emphasizing the gender double standard in which men, specifically, were given countless chances to redeem themselves even if they were murderers. Bly didn’t use a woman prisoner to compare because women were not given the same legal rights as men. Men could literally get away with murder but women in the late 1800s could not prove their sanity (Bly pgs. 281-297). 

Men seeing their wives as property or less of a person is why it was socially appropriate in this time period to commit their wives to insane asylums if they thought it was fit. According to “The Rise and Decline of the American Asylum Movement in the 19th Century”, psychiatry in the late 1800s left little to be desired. The doctors did not understand the full extent of mental illness at the time and according to the article did not start to get a full grasp until the 1980s, nearly a hundred years after Nellie Bly’s experience. Psychiatric institutions were referred to as “insane asylums” or “lunatic asylums” showing with the lack of sensitivity for the names how little was known about mental illness at the time. Doctors at the time did not know much about the disease or how far the extent of mental illness goes and its severity. The article about the “rise and decline” of mental hospitals described society’s stand on mental hospitals as “out of sight and out of mind”, showing how society in the late 1800s just wanted the “lunatics” to be put away so the public did not have to deal with them. Psychiatrists would assure families to not worry or blame themselves for the mental illness of their loved one. They are assured the families mental illness was not hereditary, caused by social standing or bad family situations. All of which we know now can factor into mental problems from anxiety to depression to schizophrenia to name a few. Mental hospitals were used less for the patient’s health, and more of a way to hide the “issues” a family had, the doctors were more concerned with the family’s feelings than the patient’s care (Luchins). 

 The doctors at the time knew next to nothing which could be part of the reason for the astonishing mistreatment of patients Nellie Bly witnessed during her ten-day stay. She recounted her check-up like experience with the doctor were he completely ignored her, focusing all of his attention on the nurse instead. The doctors did not know what was really wrong with their patients or how to treat them, especially because Bly was completely sane and it took them ten days to realize she did not belong in the asylum. 

The article describes how poor conditions the asylums were in, aligning with Bly’s story as well. In the 1850s the asylums were known to have filthy accommodations, poor food, patients in restraints and disinterested nurses. Bly recalled how cold the asylum was, how the patients had to force the food down, and the countless abuse the nurses put the patients through. Bly recalled the nurses made the patients clean the institution, a twisted truth because tax dollars went to fund these asylums but instead of the staff doing their job, the institution makes the patient, who needs help, clean the institutions. Several situations were mentioned when the nurses physically beat a patient. One instance a patient was crying and the nurses choked her, Bly “plainly saw the marks of their fingers on her throat”, a terrible thing for the staff that is supposed to be helping the patients not harming them. The lack of sensitivity to the patients and violence shows the ignorance of the severity of mental illness. Violence and abuse showed how the nurses and doctors did not think of mental patients as actual people with problems, but more like animals or inmates, not deserving basic rights. Their ignorance of understanding how real mental illness is highlights their behavior towards their patients.  

By looking at the work Marie Howland did for woman’s rights and the research about the mistreatment of psychiatric patients in the late 1800s we can see how courageous Nellie Bly was, but also what she went through was not unusual. Women were expected to act a certain way and when they didn’t they were considered “crazy”. Mental illnesses in the late 1800s to the 1980s were very prevalent but not understood as medical conditions that could be treated. Instead of treating psychiatric patients, the patients were committed like prisoners, locked up to hide from society. Society’s lack of understanding for the disease influenced how the idea of “insanity” could be applied to “different” like women who did not conform and then were committed with no chance to prove their sanity as seen in Nellie Bly’s experience. Knowing the historical context of the lack of women’s rights and the lack of understanding of mental illness one can see why Nellie Bly felt such a need to commit herself in order to expose such horrendous treatment. 
