46 pages • 1 hour read
Nellie BlyTen Days In A Mad-House
Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 1887A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
The Societal and Systemic Mistreatment of Mentally Ill Individuals
Content Warning: This section discusses violence and abusive behavior toward, and mistreatment of, women and people with disabilities and mental health conditions.
In Ten Days in a Mad-House, Nellie Bly illustrates the deep-seated mistreatment of mentally ill individuals through describing her undercover experience in Blackwell’s Island Insane Asylum. Rather than offering medical and psychological support, the institution dehumanized and neglected the women in its care, exposing the failings of a system that prioritized containment over healing.
Bly’s investigation, filled with harrowing details of deprivation and brutality, reveals how society’s disregard for mental health fostered neglect and violence within institutional walls. The asylum’s staff, undertrained and often indifferent, embodied this systemic failure. For instance, Bly describes how Dr. Dent, the asylum’s superintendent, acknowledged that “he had no means by which to tell positively if the bath was cold and of the number of women put into the same water” (96), highlighting the complete absence of oversight and care.
Bly’s observations show that the asylum’s bureaucratic structure enabled staff to mistreat patients without accountability. The doctors, often dismissive, spent little time with the women, relegating medical care to superficial examinations. Nurses, meanwhile, were frequently abusive: They humiliated, slapped, and even beat women, knowing that no one would check or challenge their behavior. This culture of impunity led to an environment where the women were reduced to objects to be subdued, rather than people to be understood.
One woman, Miss Tillie Mayard, entered the institution in fragile health yet was subjected to the same cold baths, inadequate clothing, and food as the other patients, ultimately worsening her condition. Bly questions, “Then if she were [insane], was this the proper place to send a woman just convalescing, to be given cold baths, deprived of sufficient clothing and fed with horrible food?” (76). Bly’s rhetorical question reinforces the inappropriateness and callousness of Mayard’s confinement, suggesting that Blackwell’s was more likely to harm than to help its patients.
The systemic disregard for patient welfare in the asylum reflects a broader societal devaluation of mentally ill individuals, who were often labeled “insane” with minimal evidence or recourse. This labeling process allowed individuals—particularly women, who faced gendered biases in mental health diagnoses—to be confined on the grounds of nonconformity or perceived social misbehavior. The asylum’s negligence toward these women symbolizes a larger failure to recognize and respect the humanity of those with a mental illness. Bly’s account highlights this failure and the profound need for systemic reform—not only within institutions like Blackwell’s but also within society at large—to ensure compassionate and dignified treatment for people with mental health conditions.
The Role of Gender in the Perception and Treatment of Mental Health
The theme of gender deeply influences the implicit biases within mental health perceptions and treatments in Ten Days in a Mad-House. Although Bly’s narrative does not offer a comparative view of male asylums, her descriptions of treatment on Blackwell’s Island suggest that the women’s experiences were intensified by both societal and institutional assumptions about female mental health. Historically, women were more likely to be institutionalized for “unfeminine” behavior, emotional expression, or nonconformity. Blackwell’s Island exemplifies this trend, where many women were committed based on accusations that often arose from their refusal to comply with expected social or marital norms.
Judge Duffy’s treatment of Bly during her examination at the Essex Market Police Court further underscores the gendered biases embedded within the system. While Duffy expressed some empathy, he also infantilized Bly, referring to her in a patronizing tone, casting her as a delicate “child” and in need of protection rather than as an independent woman with autonomy. By dismissing her words as emotional expressions rather than statements of rationality, he underlined the stereotype of female “hysteria” that underpinned many psychiatric confinements. Duffy’s perception of Bly as a helpless, irrational figure served to validate her supposed need for institutionalization, illustrating how paternalistic attitudes made women’s self-expression a liability rather than a legitimate claim to agency.
The asylum itself became a site where this bias was systemically reinforced. Bly encountered numerous women, such as Miss Tillie Mayard and Josephine Despreau, who displayed no signs of mental illness but were denied the opportunity to prove their wellness. These women’s rational pleas and self-advocacy were disregarded by doctors and nurses alike, who attributed any assertion of autonomy to “insane” delusions or simply ignored the women’s voices altogether. This dismissal of women’s credibility highlights how the voices of institutionalized women, seen as unstable by default, were easily overridden by both medical and social authorities. Furthermore, this disregard for the women’s agency led to their infantilization within the institution, with nurses and doctors routinely ordering, coercing, or even forcefully restraining patients as though they were incapable of understanding or responding to reason.
By illustrating these interactions and the institutionalized oppression of female patients, Bly reveals how the perception and treatment of women’s mental health have been shaped by gendered assumptions. Although she does not examine male asylums, her observations of Blackwell’s Island expose the ways in which gender prejudice compounded the mistreatment of women labeled “insane.” The story subtly invites readers to question not only the lack of adequate mental health care for these women but also the very definitions of “sanity” and “madness” in a society that readily equated a woman’s resistance to control with illness. Bly’s narrative thus exposes the importance of addressing gender bias in mental health practices and underscores the need for greater advocacy for women’s autonomy within institutional spaces.
The Power of the Written Word to Effect Social Change
The theme of the written word’s power to create change is foundational to Ten Days in a Mad-House and underscores Bly’s unwavering commitment to her cause. Her expose opens with a note about her significant achievement: securing a $1 million increase in funding for the care of those with a mental illness. This same fact is reiterated in her final lines, framing the work as a successful intervention in the systemic abuse of asylum patients. This strategic repetition of her impact bookends her story, underscoring the immense potential of journalism to effect reform and reminding readers of the concrete changes that her words initiated.
Bly’s narrative is driven by her understanding of journalism’s transformative potential, which fueled her resolve to endure the harrowing experience. She subjected herself to mistreatment, freezing temperatures, poor nutrition, and outright cruelty—all to illuminate the injustices hidden within Blackwell’s Island. Her willingness to place herself in danger was founded on her conviction that an accurate, firsthand account could catalyze reform in ways that secondhand stories or statistical reports might not. Bly’s firsthand observations and chilling descriptions aim to engage readers emotionally, making them feel the urgency of the situation and drawing them into the need for change.
The narrative structure and intensity of Ten Days in a Mad-House illustrate how Bly’s use of detailed descriptions of abuse and patient neglect serve as both an indictment and a call to action. Her decision to recount specific patient experiences, from the abuses faced by women like Josephine Despreau and Tillie Mayard to her own mistreatment by nurses and doctors, adds humanity to her reporting. By shedding light on the daily horrors these women endured, Bly not only creates empathy but also drives home the ethical responsibility of society to advocate for its most vulnerable members. Her story encouraged readers at the time to reconsider their beliefs about mental health institutions and demand that such places be made safe and humane.
Bly’s investigation marks one of the earliest and most impactful uses of stunt journalism to bring awareness to social issues (See: Background). Her work serves as a testament to the written word’s ability to penetrate the public conscience and effect systemic change. Through the framework of a personal narrative, Bly not only documented her findings but also encouraged readers to act upon them. By closing the narrative with the same achievement she opens it with—the increased funding and attention to mental health—Bly underscores her narrative’s purpose and reminds readers of her work’s tangible impact. In doing so, she exemplifies how journalism, when wielded with courage and conviction, has the power to challenge institutions, shift public opinion, and pave the way for societal reform.
