The Hype of the Madwoman

Whitney Walters

Dr. Halverson

English 102

16 May 2013

The Hype of the Madwomen

     “Men were always quick to believe in the madness of women.”- Alison Goodman. This quote speaks a lot about how women were viewed by society in the nineteenth century and still today.  It was commonly thought that every woman was born mad and if she hadn’t shown her madness yet, it was bubbling under the surface, threatening to come up and give adequate reason to send her to an insane asylum. During the nineteenth century, female hysteria skyrocketed and asylums saw more women patients than ever before, causing the rise of the Victorian madwoman. This rise and their role in insane asylums were due to many gender roles and the oppression of women during the nineteenth century, some of which my paper will delve into by looking at detailed accounts of these women who inhabited the asylums.

Why Women?

            Some may ask what started this idea that women were mad lunatics, running around ready to strike at any minute. Surely women couldn’t have gone mad at the turn of the century, but rather they have been mad all along and much thought wasn’t given to it until the nineteenth century. The differentiation began at the end of the eighteenth century when a shift occurred in the way madness was viewed and treated (Showalter 8). Lunatics were formerly seen as brutes, ferocious animals that needed to be kept in chains and strait jackets living in heavily locked cells, but there was the first psychiatric revolution that turned lunatics to be seen merely as sick humans that were pitied (Showalter 8). This revolution caused many reformers, wealthy philanthropists, and magistrates looked into how insanity was treated in private madhouses, workhouses, and prisons. They used their findings to create an alternate way to treat insanity, and started insane asylums where patients were heavily surveillance (Showalter 8). This turn also shifted lunatics from being male patients to female patients. Surprisingly, in the middle of the eighteenth century, the most common image of madness was a sculpture of two male nudes manacled together (Showalter 8). By 1815, the rape and murder of women patients by madhouse keepers changed this image of the madman and replaced it with a victimized and delicate lady (Showalter 9).  There seemed to be a fundamental link between femininity and insanity, with women being represented as irrational, and men being seen as reasonable and knowledgeable (Showalter 4).   Insane asylums entrapped women with greater ease, kept them longer, and released them with less frequency than their male peers (Matlock 167). In fact, there are files of a doctor named Richard Napier from the seventeenth century that shows that women made up nearly twice as many cases of mental disorder than men (Showalter 3) and there were 1,182 female lunatics for every 1,000 male lunatics (Showalter 52).

Stress of the Ideal Victorian Woman

Two centuries later, the “Angel in the House” emerged. It was the Victorian feminine ideology, coined by Coventry Patmore in his epic that portrayed an idealized image of the Victorian woman: cooking, cleaning, and tending to her husband’s every need (Yildirim 114). The Victorian ideology of women is perhaps best represented by Queen Victoria herself, when she described marriage as a “great happiness... in devoting oneself to another who is worthy of one's affection; still, men are very selfish and the woman's devotion is always one of submission which makes our poor sex so very unenviable... it cannot be otherwise as God has willed it so" (Yildirim 117). The perfect Victorian woman’s main mission was to serve others dutifully and selflessly and to be deemed a “lady”; women had to follow the norms and manners inflicted upon them by the society (Yildirim 117). In the Victorian social pyramid, a woman was always considered secondary both in the family and society and her only role was to be a servant to her husband and children, having no desires or needs outside of this role (Yildirim 118). Acting in anyway outside of the gender norms pressed upon women was not acceptable and could lead to a one-way ticket to an insane asylum. 

There are many causes as to why women make up the majority of mental disorder patients, ranging from sexual oppression to stress from their family life. Most female patients are a product of their social situations, both from their confining roles as daughters, wives, and mothers and their mistreatment by a male-dominated psychiatric profession (Showalter 3).  Doctor Richard Napier saw that among his patients, women of all social classes complained more of stress and unhappiness in marriage, had more anxiety over their children, and suffered more depression than their male counterparts (Showalter 3). This goes to show that the stress of being a doting mother and wife was overwhelming for some women as they tried to live up to society’s idea of a perfect family woman. The women of the nineteenth century became so overworked trying to be the perfect housewife that they fell ill a lot from the stress and became delirious (Showalter 55). According to Lunbeck, seventy percent of manic-depressive patients “belong to the female sex with its greater emotional excitability.” This suggests that the gender difference was not just a matter of perception by society, but was encoded into the very categories that ordered psychiatrists’ observations (Lunbeck 148).

Biological Factors & Sexual Repression of Women

Another theory of why women were more susceptible to lunacy was because of their instability of their reproductive systems and the biological crises linked to the female life cycle including: puberty, pregnancy, childbirth, and menopause (Showalter 55). Their reproductive systems interfered with their sexual, emotional, and rational control, causing them to be more susceptible to insanity (Showalter 55). This connection between the female reproductive and nervous systems led to the condition called “reflex insanity in women” which led to a weakened mind because of their life cycles (Showalter 55).  In fact, most female patients were admitted to the asylums right after they went through puberty and experienced their first menstruation. Doctors then argued that menstrual discharge in itself predisposed women to insanity and irregular menstruation was seen as dangerous so they treated women with purgatives, forcing medicine, hip baths, and leeches on the thighs (Showalter 56). During the nineteenth century, females weren’t allowed to publicly talk about anything that was going on with their bodies and their mothers didn’t prepare them for it all, causing them to have a mental breakdown and have great feelings of anxiety and shame. In fact, twenty-five percent of female mental patients were left completely in the dark about their menstrual cycle and once they experienced their first period, they became frightened, screamed, and went into hysterical fits, causing them to be seen as mad (Showalter  57). Up until their first menstruation, girls were treated just like their brothers, but after, they were forbidden to participate in physical activities, traveling, exercising, and studying. Now a woman, the female had to give up everything and stay at home to become the perfect housewife (Showalter 57). Diagnosis for insanity was highly imperfect and the male psychiatrists used knowledge extracted from embarrassed and confused female patients (Lunbeck 143). Examination was an arena, after all, in which psychiatrist set the rules, called the plays, and determined the outcome, so no amount of a female explaining her menstrual situation would help her sanity in the doctor’s eyes (Lunbeck 143). This would explain why so many young women were committed right after their first menstrual cycle because not only were they confused about what was happening to their bodies, they were also deeply embarrassed too.

Many women were seen as lunatics with their sexual orientation and sexual desires, thus leading them to get committed. Up until the nineteenth century, women weren’t allowed to show their feelings and affection towards ones they loved and at the turn of the century, they had relaxed their sexual etiquette and were viewed as “hypersexual” (Lunbeck 188). Before, mothers taught their daughters that they were to feel no passion or sexual desire because, “in the conventional society, which men have made for women, and women have accepted, they must have none, they must act the farce of hypocrisy.” (Showalter 64). Victorian women were seen to have a lesser capacity for erotic pleasure than males and a lesser capacity for sexual feeling of her own; they were merely to see themselves as a passive vehicle of male sexuality (Reuther 145).  Reuther states, “Rapid industrialization went hand in hand with the depletion of the economic functions and sexism of women traditionally married and centered on the home.”  Industrialization drew many women into factory jobs and women soon turned away from the idea that their roles were to take care of her family and home (Reuther 197). With the times changing, many women stayed single, started dating around, got jobs, and even turned to lesbianism, something that was unheard of decades earlier. The nineteenth century became known for the intensifying crisis of the family: the rising divorce rate, the falling birthrate, and the lowering of moral standards (Lunbeck 18). Industry and feminism were loosening the bonds of family, tradition, and sexuality, setting women adrift (Lunbeck 18).  This was caused by the Victorian society attempt to pacify the contradiction between the women’s domesticity and sexual repression (Reuther 198). Women grew tired of being trapped in the private sector to service male compensatory needs and turned towards the same sex, giving up being a child nurturer and a textbook perfect housewife (Reuther 198). This behavior was frowned upon and the new found independence and sexual deviance led many women to the cells of an asylum (Lunbeck 194).

Being a single woman who was perfectly content without domesticity in her life proved to be impermissible. A thirty-nine year old French musician named Hersilie Rouy was sent to an asylum on behalf of the requests from her half-brother (Matlock 167). Hersilie was single and had very little income, but suspicions of lesbianism swirled around her and it was enough to have the authorities called. Matlock states, “Hersilie was labeled manipulative, dangerous, and sexually provocative by the doctors who examined her and she would find few resources-legal or otherwise-at her disposal.”  For the next fourteen years, Hersilie Rouy would attempt to write her way out of incarceration, keeping a journal which she hoped would convince officials that she had never been estranged of mind, but only the brunt of a terrible scheme by her family (Matlock 167). Hersilie’s writing evoked the doctors and her self-defense brought intolerable punishment down upon her: "It is usually against individuals who have their senses and know how to defend themselves or complain that they use these terrible means to break them” (Matlock 171). In an attempt to keep Hersilie quiet and stop her plans of proving her sanity, the doctors and nurses tried everything including: beatings; straightjackets; a shaved head; solitary confinement; imprisonment with dangerous patients, deprivation of: food, water, heat, clothing, light, or medical treatment, and most importantly, no writing (Matlock 171). Thankfully, Hersilie disobeyed the rules and wrote her story down on any surface she could use, with any ink she could obtain. Hersilie's writing gained her attention, hearings, and eventually protection under the law and she was set free (Matlock 168). Her story shows that a woman living a life different from the perfect housewife can easily be committed to an insane asylum, even if they are perfectly sane and they have to spend the rest of their life trying to prove it.

           

Insane Asylums: The Perfect Dumping Ground

The last reason a woman was thrown into an insane asylum was by her family and friends if they claimed the woman was insane. The woman couldn’t testify against it because that would prove that she was in denial and clearly insane. In a lot of cases, women were sent away by their husbands after they got sick of them and moved on to other love interests or when they thought their wives had become too expensive to take care of (Matlock 167).

Sigmund Freud discusses the case of Dora, who has been reformed by feminists as an illustration of gender conflicts in Victorian Europe (Akavia 193). Many think that Dora romanticized hysteria and regard her as a heroine whose illness is a form of revolt against societal norms while others pity her as a victimized figure (Akavia 193). Dora’s case is heavily influenced by her father who was sick all of his life and seeked treatment from Sigmund Freud for neurological complications of syphilis (Akavia 197). Her father made Dora his confidante and trusted her with his most intimate secrets, something that will later backfire for Dora and ruin her life (Akavia 203). During the nineteenth century, it was common for daughters to nurse their sick fathers back to health, but according to Freud, “this led to the young woman’s own illness and  anyone whose mind is taken up by the hundred and one tasks of sick-nursing . . . is creating material for a ‘retention hysteria’.” Akavia states that, “In addition to being deprived of sleep, obsessively worrying, and neglecting her own body, the nurse is compelled to preserve a demeanor of indifference when faced by a large number of disturbing impressions. She is therefore likely to repress them, sowing the seeds for her own hysteria.” The stress of taking care of her father and knowing that all her life consisted of was being a good housewife, deprived of anything intellectual, caused Dora to exhibit symptoms of hysteria. When her father’s health worsened, he hired a new nurse with whom he started an affair with.  Dora found out and threatened to tattle in exchange for more independence, but her father turned her over to Freud for psychotherapeutic treatment (Showalter 159). From Freud’s analysis and journal entries of Dora’s case, he blames her hysteria on the jealousy she felt from her father’s affair because she had repressed sexual desires for her father, rather than the stress of nursing (Akavia 207). Freud had her committed to an asylum because he thought she was obviously hysterical and had possible homosexual or incestual desires and when Dora denied the allegations, it only gave Freud further proof that she was insane, thus Dora spent the rest of her life as a neurotic patient (Showalter, 160). As many can see, the rise of the Victorian madwoman can be due to the fact that insane asylums were seen as an easy place to dump somebody that you no longer cared for or in Dora’s case, for knowing too much, no questions asked.

            Since women were seen as unstable lunatics, it’s no wonder they were treated poorly in the insane asylums. Very rarely did female patients get the help they actually needed and most of the time the women were swallowed up by the asylum and were never to be seen again, in fact, hundreds of women disappeared without a trace each year into the labyrinth of the psychiatric order (Matlock 167). Families that committed their female family members thought they were receiving the best care possible, but in reality little was known about how patients in insane asylums were treated and the patients would be beaten if they told anyone how they were really taken care of. Unfortunately, attendants had to resort to using force to administer treatment that often led to patients getting struck, kicked, punched, hair pulled, or not treated in a morally human way (Lunbeck 171).

Nellie Bly: Girl Stunt Reporter in 19^th Century

Female journalist Nellie Bly can attest to the abuse received in insane asylums during the nineteenth century. Nellie’s story is fascinating and exposed a lot of the problems that insane asylums have, especially internal ones that dealt with the staff and how they did their jobs. Nellie, a stunt girl reporter looking for her next big break, faked hysteria and lunacy and fooled police officers, judges, and doctors who examined her and declared she was a crazy hysteric. Nellie was committed to Blackwell Island insane asylum for ten days where she saw some of the worst horrors of her life. By performing hysteria and being diagnosed by experts as "most definitely" a hysteric, Bly countered an expert discourse that often disempowered women (Lutes 221). She entered territory controlled by the predominantly male medical field, in which female sexuality was exposed, unmasked, and interpreted by men and by turning the tables and unmasking the male experts themselves, Bly positioned herself as an authoritative interpreter of one of the most threatening pockets of the city: the asylum (Lutes 221). Elizabeth Lunbeck emphasizes hysteria's unstable position within the production of expert knowledge: "To no other psychiatric category was the distinction between truth and reality on the one hand lies and simulation on the other so critical but so impossible to determine. No other category-and no other group of patients so stirred psychiatrists' anxiety and so unsettled their professional equanimity." The doctors who called Bly "hysterical" not only set themselves up for an embarrassing incident, but they also shaped Bly's emerging stunt-girl persona by giving her a label that was already vulnerable to manipulation (Lutes 232). After her experience at the asylum, Nellie Bly emerged as one of the nineteenth century’s most prominent and daring female journalist and took on many more stunt girl reports (Lutes 233).

Into the Mad-House

The women Nellie described around her looked like this, full of despair.

On Nellie’s first day there, she met a German woman who spoke very little English and because of that she was put in the asylum (Bly 26).  The nurses taunted and teased the poor woman because they knew that she didn’t know enough English to respond to them or tell on them (Bly 27). Nellie also met her first real companion there that she could confide in, a woman named Miss Tillie Mayard. Nellie asked her if she was insane and the woman’s response was, "No, but as we have been sent here, we will have to be quiet until we find some means of escape. They will be few, though, since all the doctors, refuse to listen to me or give me a chance to

Prove my sanity." (Bly 25). Sane women sent to asylums were condemned to them, never given a chance to explain why they were sent there, whether it is by a jealous family member or their sexual orientation.  The next morning, the women were woken up early to get their monthly bath that was one of the worst events Nellie endured there (Bly 32). The water they used was ice cold and the nurses scrubbed so hard that patients’ hair would come out and their skin would bleed.  The entire time the nurses ignored the complaints of pain and told the patients, "There isn't much fear of hurting you. Shut up or you'll get it worse." (Bly 32).  With forty-five patients, they only had two towels and never once got new bath water, something Nellie found disgusting because some of the women had lice and other flesh diseases. Nellie states, “I watched crazy patients who had the most dangerous eruptions all over their faces dry on the towels and then saw women with clean skins turn to use them. I went to the bathtub and washed my face at the running faucet and my underskirt did duty for a towel.” When Nellie tried to mention to the nurses that two towels wasn’t enough, especially with some of the women’s skin conditions, the nurses responded by saying, "Well, I don't care about that, you are in a public institution now, and you can't expect to get anything. This is charity, and you should be thankful for what you get.” (Bly 34). Nellie argued that the city pays to keep the place up and patients’ families pay for their keep, the nurses said, "Well, you don't need to expect any kindness here, for you won't get it.” (Bly 34). Obviously the city didn’t have enough money to properly maintain the asylum because the living conditions were very poor.  Nellie found it surprising the fact that the nurses did not once clean the ward, but it was the patients, who do it all themselves, even to cleaning the nurses' bedrooms and caring for their clothing (Bly 35).

Her entire time there, Nellie did not once see the doctors take interest in their patients.  Nellie pronounces, "There are sixteen doctors on this island, and excepting two, I have never seen them pay any attention to the patients. How can a doctor judge a woman's sanity by merely bidding her good morning and refusing to hear her pleas for release? Even the sick ones know it is useless to say anything, for the answer will be that it is their imagination." Nellie states, “When the doctors came, the patients made no movement to tell him of their sufferings and when I asked some of them to tell how they were suffering from the cold and insufficiency of clothing, they replied that the nurse would beat them if they told.” Sadly, the nurses took pleasure in beating, choking, and locking patients in closets for days, making their job with the patients a game of cat and mouse (Bly 39). Nellie talked to many women there who weren’t actually insane, but committed because of their families or friends. The saner they acted, the more insane the doctors thought and there was no way they could prove their innocence because no one took the time to listen. As Nellie states, “The insane asylum on Blackwell's Island is a human rat-trap. It is easy to get in, but once there it is impossible to get out”.

Courageous reporter Nellie Bly

The last part of her novel describes Nellie’s joyous feeling of being released and guilt that she felt for leaving women behind in the hands of horrible caretakers (Bly 49). After she left, Nellie appeared in front of a grand jury to talk about what really happened at Blackwell Island and soon the jury questioned the nurses and doctors there, who of course said Nellie was lying about the mistreatment (Bly 50). The jury decided to plan a visit to the Island and once they got there, saw it was clean and seemed like a “happy” place. This frustrated Nellie to no end because she knew they were putting on an act, trying to cover up for the things that actually occurred there (Bly 50). . Nellie got some of the patients to talk to the authorities and from this they determined that Bly wasn’t lying and that there needed to be some drastic changes at Blackwell Island (Bly 51). Nellie Bly knew she wanted to help those poor souls in the insane asylum and she wrote a book of her account called Ten Days in a Mad-House (Bly 51). Nellie states, “I have one consolation for my work, on the strength of my story, the committee of appropriation provides $1,000,000, more than was ever before given, for the benefit of the insane.”

            Nellie Bly’s account of the treatment patients received in one insane asylum during the nineteenth century is common for all insane asylums during this time period. Many asylums didn’t have funds to hire certified and compassionate nurses along with providing good living conditions. The women that Nellie met in the asylum were all sent there for reasons stated above, like signs

What does this all mean?

            The rise of the Victorian madwoman can be contributed to many reasons, but one can mostly see that regardless of mental illness or not, society views the female sex as mad and unstable. Many women were sent to asylums because they weren’t the perfect housewives the nineteenth century society called for and most times they cracked under the pressure of trying to live up to such high standards. The young Victorian female had to live almost a life of secrecy, never being able to discuss female puberty or their sexual desires for fear that they would be labeled insane. This female oppression only worsened when sane women weren’t give the right to testify their sanity, especially when their family members signed her rights away for a multitude of reasons. Nellie Bly’s account shows that women had no power in not only a male dominated society, but also a male dominated medical field, thus women’s voices and rights were taken away due to the lack of power. Our female ancestors faced a horrible oppression just for being a woman and sadly we still see that today. Women will forever be seen as mad lunatics running around due to the past history that men and insane asylums have given them. A common example of this can be seen when men state that women are acting crazy around their menstrual time of the month and this links the image of women and madness together today in the 21^st century. Although women have been given more rights and are hardly ever sent to mental institutions for reasons found in the 19^th century, there is still the stereotype of domesticity that surrounds the female sex and they seem as if they will never go away in a society that is still mildly male dominated. We will never know what moment in time linked women to madness, but we will forever have to live with the close minded stereotypes that our female ancestors had to face.

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