Primary Research

For this research project I decided to do cultural analysis for my primary research. I initially thought I would visit a mental institution about an hour away and interview the director there,but the task seemed almost impossible because there was no way to contact the director to schedule a meeting and I would have to be cleared as a visitor, a process that would take too long for this project. Also, I have shifted my research question to look at the rise of the Victorian madwoman and a modern day mental institution might not have a lot of information on this subject. From the start of my research, I have looked into Nellie Bly, the reporter who faked lunacy to see how conditions at asylums really were and later wrote a book titled, Ten Days In a Madhouse. After much digging around on the Internet and looking at online libraries, I finally found the book and decided to use it as cultural analysis for my primary research. I chose her book because she was put in an insane asylum during the time of the rise of the Victorian madwoman and she had great accounts of how women were actually treated at these asylums. I have already done some secondary research on the treatment of women in mental institutions in the 19th century, but didn't find as much information as I had hoped. After reading Nellie's book, I found out a lot more about the horrors found in these institution and plan to use them to explain how women were treated. I also plan on using Nellie's accounts of how women, especially foreign women, were put in asylums because of the language barrier or they were just too poor to function normally in society. This well help me explain a reason as to why insane asylums became overflowing with "madwomen" in the 19th century. I see many connections within my primary research and my secondary research because most of my secondary research has focused on Nellie Bly and how she came to be in the madhouse and what she endured there, but I could never find any information on it until I read her book. I think that having previous knowledge of Nellie Bly and her story made it easier for me to use her book as my primary research rather than doing an interview or survey. Since I'm doing cultural analysis for my primary research, I got the book online and read it through. The book was very long and it would've been foolish to print off, so I took organized notes by chapter on it because I didn't have the book in front of me to mark up and highlight. Before I read it, I had a few questions, like what does this cultural artifact reveal about gender, race, and sexuality? After reading the book, I was able to see that it revealed the way women were viewed in the 19th century. The male doctors wouldn't give the women who were truly sane the time of day because they assumed all women were crazy, even though some of the patients at the Blackburn's Island Asylum where Nellie was sent were there because their husbands wanted new wives. I think this will help me explain why women were put in insane asylums in the first place and how they were treated there.