A review by princessrobotiv
Ten Days in a Mad-House by Nellie Bly

3.0

I shuddered to think how completely the insane were in the power of their keepers, and how one could weep and plead for release, and all of no avail, if the keepers were so minded.

This firsthand recounting of time spent in an asylum was a short and matter-of-fact condemnation of the processes and conditions of the institutions of the time. Nellie Bly undoubtedly exercised a great deal of bravery while going undercover, and of course, the impact her work had on the reform of said asylums cannot be underrepresented.

The work itself, however, is equal parts sad and informative, on-the-nose and out-of-touch. Bly approached the topics with, I believe, a very progressive viewpoint for her time, but there are still a lot of moments of hapless insensitivity. Our intrepid reporter checks out fine ass doctors in the very institutions she's undercover investigating for human rights violations, and this happens multiple times. Hilarious, but demonstrative of my point re: tone.

Additionally, there was a sense of superiority or, perhaps, disconnection from her experience demonstrated by Bly. This was expressed often throughout the report, sometimes blatantly and sometimes subtly, and took a few different forms.

The floor was bare, and the little wooden tables were sublimely ignorant of such modern beautifiers as varnish, polish and table-covers. It is useless to talk about the cheapness of linen and its effect on civilization. Yet these honest workers, the most deserving of women, are asked to call this spot of bareness—home.

Come on, Nellie--I know you mean well, but these women's problems don't center around linen, I can tell you that much.

However, Nellie's socioeconomic position and her ethnicity/nationality helped to highlight some interesting if obvious facets of the abuse occurring in places like Blackwell. Firstly, there were several unexplored connections between class and treatment thrown in:

Besides, to get to Blackwell’s Island my friends would have had to feign poverty, and, unfortunately for the end I had in view, my acquaintance with the struggling poor, except my own self, was only very superficial.

Here, seemingly without much reflection on her thoughts, Bly casually mentions that one would have to feign poverty in order to even end up in Blackwell (a thing her friends couldn't possibly do because they're all too posh, darling), highlighting an obvious relationship between forced asylum and societal control of the poor. These days, you might draw that line more easily to the prison industrial complex.

There were a few interesting things stated about immigrants, too. Several immigrant women were featured while Bly inhabited Blackwell, as in the following passage:

Thus was Mrs. Louise Schanz consigned to the asylum without a chance of making herself understood. Can such carelessness be excused, I wonder, when it is so easy to get an interpreter? If the confinement was but for a few days one might question the necessity. But here was a woman taken without her own consent from the free world to an asylum and there given no chance to prove her sanity. Confined most probably for life behind asylum bars, without even being told in her language the why and wherefore.

Bly's statements highlight the ways in which the state used the excuse of insanity to lock away members of society that many Americans had trouble accepting (and still do today), and the inherent violence and depravity of those actions when taken against somebody that doesn't have any means to object or dispute the treatment.

Most apparently, there was the obvious function of the asylum as a way to control "misbehaving" or neurodivergent women, perhaps the main function of those institutions:

They said her name is Sarah Fishbaum, and that her husband put her in the asylum because she had a fondness for other men than himself.

All in all, this was a short and valuable read, if a sober one, and I would recommend it. It's currently free on Kindle Unlimited, too, and can likely be found for free elsewhere online, so check it out.

While I prefer a bit more extrapolation in my nonfiction, I can't fault Bly for presenting her investigative report in a relatively cool and factual manner because that tone was likely necessary in order for her work to be viewed as legitimate by her peers or society, given the time period. I'd be interested in reading another work fully detailing the impact her work had on society, which was entirely missing from this report.

The other reports included in the book I found very forgettable and not at all valuable, personally.