The nineteenth century ushered in a new age of medical science aimed at understanding mental illness, resulting in the construction of asylums as a way of containing and treating the “insane” citizens of England. The creation of which, however, did not always have a positive effect on patients, particularly women, who received the brunt of the mistreatment because of their low societal status in relation to men. Doctors, husbands and other male figures were able to utilize the mental health system as a way of controlling women’s role in society and regulating their freedom. Additionally, a lack of medical regulation during the time allowed for questionable treatment methods that often left these women in worse condition than when they entered such facilities, especially in instances where they were committed when not actually mentally ill. And depending on a woman’s financial status, their entry into a public or private asylum could drastically affect the quality of their treatment as well, though both types were guilty of acting, in some cases, more like prisons than hospitals. Thus, the mysteries of these facilities and their important role in the lives of some women became of great interest to Victorian authors, specifically those writing about the gothic. This genre allowed writers of the time to address women’s unfair treatment in asylums by disguising their social commentary as fictional horror. In Wilkie Collins’ The Woman in White an important female character is wrongfully committed in place of her actually insane doppelgänger, the truths of the matter distracted from by creepy prose and fantastical ghosts, though as a white woman she is treated better than, perhaps, a colored woman would be. Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre introduces a non-white character, Bertha, who is confined to an attic, a pseudo asylum, for her hereditary insanity. Both novelists do work to expose the horrors of the confinement of females in mental facilities in the only way in which they could at the time – subtly, but powerfully.
Historical Context
Bethlem (‘Bedlam’) Royal Hospital, the first documented asylum in Europe began admitting mental patients in 1407, though it remained one of the only mental health facilities in England for some time (Science Museum). It was not until nearly four hundred years later that the Madhouses Act of 1774 passed as a method of regulating the treatment of the mentally ill in facilities such as Bethlem (National Archives). This act required that doctors in charge of asylums must be licensed and that they consent to a yearly inspection by a city or government official. In 1808 the County Asylums Act passed, which allowed county facilities to be built to provide more accessible mental healthcare services for those not living in major metropolitan areas, though they were not nearly as popular as the larger public and private asylums, which began to arise in the more populated parts of England (National Archives). That being said, mental healthcare facilities did not become a requirement for any portion of the country until the Lunacy Act of 1845, which jumpstarted the mass construction of asylums because of its requirement that every county have a place to treat and house their mentally ill that was separate from their area’s physician’s office (National Archives). Each county was expected to fund their own facility, but unfortunately a general lack of funding amongst most asylums at the time typically resulted in poor conditions and questionable care. Following the Lunacy Act an average Victorian asylum was built to accommodate anywhere from a hundred to several hundred “lunatics” at any given time – the entire country of England housing a few thousand patients within its facilities throughout the nineteenth century.
Life in a Victorian asylum was unpleasant for nearly all patients, but those who suffered from the brunt of the mistreatment were, perhaps, the women because of the rampant gender inequality plaguing the era. As I wrote about in my essay titled “Gossip in Sense and Sensibility,” Mary Wollstonecraft’s eighteenth-century feminist piece “A Vindication of the Rights of Woman,” is written in response to conservative critics such as Jean-Jacques Rousseau who “declares that a woman should never, for a moment feel herself independent” from men (Wollstonecraft 109). She chose – via nonfiction rather than fiction – to address such claims, like many writers during the era, in order to affect some form of societal change by making readers aware of the injustices that were occurring across the country. Wollstonecraft does this by arguing that men and women, despite their biological differences, should be considered mental and social equals and therefore be able to hold the same societal positions. She also declares that women should be able to speak their minds freely, which is the standpoint that garners, perhaps, the most opposition because the fact that women should be granted the ability to obtain some sort of “noble pursuit” separate from men was an extremely unpopular opinion amongst the male-dominated English society seeking control over the perceived lesser sex (111). I claimed in my essay that her argument, though perfectly plausible to any rational and independently thinking female of the time, was largely ignored by men.
One of the main reasons behind this informational imbalance was that medical professionals during the Victorian Era held a great influence over the evidence that was being presented to the public concerning the equality of men and women. Doctor Henry Maudsley, for example, in his piece “Sex in Mind and Education” in Popular Science Monthly – a well-known publication in the medical field – documents the popular opinion held against women of the time. In it he states that it is impossible to “transform a woman into a man,” because women must be kept in “a special sphere of development and activity,” which is very contradictory to the change Wollstonecraft tries to illicit (Maudsley 1). As a doctor, statements such as these wholly influence the ways in which women are treated during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries – socially and thus medically – because they are perceived to be based in fact. Women therefore remain traditionally homebound with nothing to do but manage household tasks and their emotions, a menial existence, which when deviated from puts even the most sane individuals at risk of being accused of madness. I concluded that unfortunately, any other existence became nearly impossible to obtain because of influential men like Dr. Maudsley creating and promoting such gender inequality. His work perpetuates the male mindset that they, as the superior sex, belong in the public sphere interacting with the outside world, while women should remain isolated in the private sphere because the two sexes are thought to differ not just physically, but mentally, emotionally and morally. Men, as Dr. Maudsley notes, are the highly intelligent sex, capable of “uniformity of thought” stemming from their “uniformity of fundamental passion,” while women, unable to control their emotions, may become hysterical if faced with too much responsibility, therefore placing them at a greater risk of going mad (2). If they so much as attempt the same mentally strenuous work as men they risk “entail[ing] life-long suffering,” which will “incapacitat[e] them for the adequate performance of the natural function of their sex” i.e. they will go mad (4). This weakness of mental strength, Maudley iterates, causes women to think with their hearts rather than their brains, which clouds their judgment and prevents them from functioning properly. This dysfunction, as Victorian men see it, oftentimes justifies the incarceration of women in asylums where they can be properly controlled and their behavior is regulated.
Literary and Sociological Context
Yannick Ripa, in her book Women and Madness, argues that reasons like Dr. Maudsley’s for keeping women contained within the domestic sphere contributed greatly to them being admitted to asylums and their unequal treatment while they were confined in such facilities. She states, “taken over by their devouring wombs,” women were thought to be prone to the destruction of their mental health, thus landing them at the hands of their husbands or doctors in the control of insane asylums (Ripa 1). A woman perceived to be mad during the Victorian Era had two options – voluntary committal, in which a third party (such as a parent or spouse) persuades the individual to commit themselves with the recommendation of a doctor, or official committal, in which an individual is committed by a medical professional typically without consent (3). When considering the aforementioned reasons for a woman to be perceived as mad, this committal process was likely utilized to safeguard society and prevent women from holding much autonomy from their male counterparts. This assumption was masked at the time by the idea that mental health facilities were created as a way of protecting and treating the mentally ill fairly and regardless of sex. Ripa asserts this argument by claiming that asylums, or “special hospitals,” worked to “silenc[e] any behavior which could be seen as threatening to the family or to society,” which would then justify a husband using the system to control the deviance of his wife (3). The reasons for women’s commitment are endless, the list for them spanning much longer than the list for men – puberty, menopause, post-partum depression, adultery, clinical depression, anxiety, etcetera – though many of the female “conditions” were based in reasoning like Dr. Maudsley’s. Women’s lives were broken by doctors into nine categories – “pre-puberty, puberty, post-intercourse, the state of pregnancy, the moment of giving birth, the post-natal period, the period of lactation, the end of menstruation and the post-menopause” (49). Issues, fabricated or not, with any of those stages were enough to warrant commitment under doctors’ broad interpretations of madness. For example, thirteen to fifteen year old female “idiots and imbeciles” (Victorian terms used to describe the mentally handicapped) upon reaching puberty were typically sent to asylums by their parents as a way of preventing unwanted pregnancies at the hands of men taking advantage of these women’s childlike mental development (50). Puberty, in relation to the domestic role of women, was only at the time “glorified when it was assimilated to potential motherhood” as well as marriage (50). With regard to menopause, Ripa states that Victorian doctors believed once a woman reached the ages of thirty-five to fifty this bodily change would coincide with the end of her sexuality and a continuance of sexual desires past that age indicated yet another form of deviance warranting committal (50-52). Another common reason was post-partum depression following the birth of a child, and though most of the time this condition was connected to puerperal fever associated with the unsanitary conditions in which women gave birth, it was still used as justification for confining women in institutions (54). Aside from the decidedly female conditions were the illnesses women developed that could affect either gender. Clinical depression, or as it was called then simply “sadness,” caused women to lose their appetites and become irritable after experiencing an “extreme emotional loss,” which doctors oftentimes viewed as a conscious choice for women, though that was not the case for men (76). The development of generalized anxiety and other similar conditions were also typically lumped with illnesses like depression under the blanket term “hysteria,” which could be defined in any number of ways depending on the motivations of the doctor evaluating the case. And since hysteria was a term used only to describe female behavior, doctors could commit a woman for practically any undesirable behavior if they utilized the term, which was created by men in the first place. Because of this double-standard, it seems as though any deviation from the perceived norms of strictly female conditions, as well as the development of problems that affected both sexes, landed women in asylums at a much higher rate than men.
The gothic genre, as it relates to this essay, became most prevalent during the mid to late nineteenth century, though it began earlier in the form of “imitation medievalism” during the Romantic Era (Norton). It is noted for inspiring “pleasurable terror” from its audiences by combining horror and culture in such a way that keeps readers enthralled long past what their comfort level would normally allow (Norton). Setting plays an important role in the spookiness of this type of literature as authors often choose to place their plot within castles, dungeons and graveyards while including things such as secret passageways, darkness, mirrors and ghosts that are disorienting to readers because of the fear they induce. Authors also tap into their characters’ sense of self – in terms of the inside and outside perceptions one typically has in relation to who they are as a person – as well instances in which characters are doubled into different characters or different versions of themselves that they have repressed. Because of the disillusioning form and content of this type of literature, authors often had the ability to include difficult, and sometimes taboo, topics like science, psychology, sociology, alienation, politics, education, family structure, etcetera and make comments on such things while protected by the veil of the gothic genre.
Literary Analysis
It is not surprising that these injustices within the mental health system spark outrage and therefore, responses, from contemporary figures like Victorian author Wilkie Collins. In his book The Woman in White, Collins makes an attempt to comment on the treatment of women within asylums by including a sub-plot within his piece in which two different female characters are unjustly confined by disguising his commentary with tropes of the gothic genre. In chapter four of the text, Walter Hartwright, the narrator, on his way through a foggy London night to his new position as drawing instructor for the Fairlie family, encounters a woman dressed entirely in white with “nothing immodest in her manner” and who does not appear “wild” (Collins 15). He also notes “the grossest of mankind could not have misconstrued her motive in speaking,” suggesting that she speaks like and appears to him to be a rather sane person (15). Afraid of being accused of something, the woman responds to Hartwright’s inquiries of her well being that she has done nothing wrong and that she is the victim of some mysterious accident. She indicates that she is fearful of “men of rank and title,” which readers later learn are, generally speaking, the cause of her misfortune (18). Pressing further Hartwright “trie[s] to lift the veil that hung between this woman and [himself]” (19). This metaphorical veil shrouds their entire conversation, as this woman only alludes to her situation and refuses to make any direct reference to the details of what exactly has happened to her. Readers’ desire to know what the circumstances are behind her current nervousness mirrors Hartwright’s curiosity and thus sparks one of the great mysteries of the story. The moment following Hartwright’s meeting with this woman on the road only complicates the mystery, as a policeman and a stranger proceed to inform him that he has been speaking to an escaped asylum inmate. Baffled because of the woman’s seemingly ordinary demeanor he thinks to himself:
The idea of absolute insanity, which we all associate with the very name of an asylum, had, I can honestly declare, never occurred to me, in connection with her. I had seen nothing, in her language or her actions, to justify it at the time; and, even with the new light thrown on her by the words which the stranger had addressed to the policeman, I could see nothing to justify it now (22).
It would seem, as is the case with many women in the Victorian Era, that the mysterious woman he encounters along the road is not actually mad for any reason understandable to the average person, but to whoever placed her in the asylum, her confinement means complete control over her actions. Hartwright wonders if he has “assisted the victim of the most horrible of all false imprisonments to escape” or “cast loose on the wide world of London an unfortunate creature, whose actions it was [his] duty, and every man’s duty, mercifully to control” (22). The latter idea is that which Collins seeks to shed light on by continuing to bring women’s agency in the matter into question as the novel progresses, though never as blatantly as he does in this first section of the text.
Hartwright later investigates the case of his student and love interest Laura Fairlie, the half-sister of the mysterious woman on the road whose name readers later learn is Anne Catherick. Laura, who becomes engaged to Sir Percival, receives a letter from Anne warning her that her new fiancé is dangerous. In confronting Anne about the information in her letter Hartwright suddenly realizes upon seeing her reaction to the name of the man in question that “her mother was guiltless in imprisoning her in the asylum. A man shut her up – and that man was Sir Percival” (90). Unfortunately, Laura – after making a promise to her father – feels obligated to follow through with her marriage to Sir Percival despite the letter she receives from Anne. Following the marriage and honeymoon, it is believed by Hartwright that Laura dies mysteriously and rather abruptly, but in actuality it is her half-sister Anne, who Sir Percival replaces in the asylum with the real Laura under a false name as a ploy to obtain her inheritance money. The proprietor of the asylum notices “changes” in his patient (who he believes to be Anne), but dismisses them because “such changes, no doubt, were not without precedent in his experience of persons mentally afflicted. Insane people were often, at one time, outwardly as well as inwardly, unlike what they were at another; the change from better to worse, or from worse to better” (378). The proprietor’s observations, as well as his inability to tell the two women apart, suggest that he sees Anne and Laura’s afflictions and delusions as interchangeable and therefore, a dime a dozen – one insane Victorian woman is simply the same as the next.
Similarly, Charlotte Brontë in Jane Eyre does work like Collins to expose the male-dominated world of mental illness while writing in the gothic genre. In chapter twenty-six of the text Jane and Mr. Rochester arrive at their wedding ceremony only to be denied their marriage because of some mysterious past wife, Bertha Mason, whom Mr. Rochester refuses to acknowledge, though she is still living and therefore still legally bound to him by marriage. Up until this point in the novel the figure of Bertha remains a secret, Brontë painting her as a sort of ghostly being. Before Jane knows of her existence she is visited in the night a few days before her wedding by a “fearful and ghastly” figure with a “savage face,” “red eyes,” and a “fearful blackened inflation of the lineaments” – a supernatural being so it seems (Brontë 249). Jane even suggests to Mr. Rochester that what she has seen may be “the foul German spectre – the vampire,” though he refuses to believe her claims, stating that she must be mistaken because of her nerves (251). Bertha, upon sneaking into Jane’s room, proceeds to tear her wedding veil in half, presumably out of jealousy as the unwanted, unloved victim of Mr. Rochester’s first marriage. As Mr. Rochester’s other “bad, mad, and imbruted” wife she seems to be the malicious double of Jane, who is portrayed as an ideal woman in comparison to Bertha (257). His justification for his marriage to Jane moving forward is that his other wife, Bertha Mason, “is mad; and she came of a mad family; idiots and maniacs through three generations” (Brontë 257). He blames this supposed madness on her family, saying, “her mother, the Creole, was both a mad woman and a drunkard – as I found out after I had wed the daughter: for they were silent on family secrets before” (257). But most importantly he states, “like a dutiful child, [Bertha] copied her parent in both points,” indicating that she had a degree of choice in the matter of becoming “mad” (257). Brontë directly references contemporary thought toward mental illness at the time by creating Bertha as the image of “moral insanity” or a person “of a singular, wayward, and eccentric character” (Prichard 12). This definition, which is taken from James Cowles Prichard’s 1835 book A Treatise on Insanity, further explains that people like Bertha’s character most likely have a “mental derangement…consisting in a morbid perversion of the feelings, affections, and active powers, without any illusion or erroneous conviction impressed upon the understanding: it sometimes coexists with an apparently unimpaired state of the intellectual faculties” (12). Unfortunately, despite the probability that Bertha suffers from a rather mild, if not wholly exaggerated, condition she is described by her husband as “stand[ing] so grave and quiet at the mouth of hell, looking collectedly at the gambols of a demon” – a possessed individual with devilish intent (258). And so he keeps her isolated from the world in the pseudo asylum that is his attic. She wastes away there, as many women in Victorian asylum situations do because of a man who seeks to control her influence on his life and a general lack of understanding and sympathy by the unfortunate society in which she was born. Bertha’s only salvation is her death, which occurs at her own hands as she plummets from the roof of the house and is likely brought on by the madness, that if not developed to this extent before she entered Mr. Rochester’s care, was certainly escalated by unjust confinement.
Both Collins and Brontë attempt to address the questionable treatment of women with regard to mental illness in their novels. Brontë writes of a wild Creole “other” as a way of distancing readers from social issues in her text, as well as utilizing common gothic tropes to get her message across. While Collins, on the other hand, uses a white upper class female, Laura, as his book’s primary damsel in distress to bring the idea home that such mistreatment can occur to even the most seemingly immune individuals. The Woman and White and Jane Eyre both assert the possibility that men were often to blame for the injustices that occurred in the lives of women that landed many in Victorian asylums, be it to gain – like Sir Percival – a monetary incentive such as an inheritance, or to cover up a notorious aspect of themselves as Mr. Rochester does. The “mad” women in these novels lack a voice – Laura because she is constrained by the desires of her father, Mr. Fairlie, and Sir Percival, Bertha because she is displaced in a country in which she does not belong at the mercy of Mr. Rochester. Both are victims of villainous “men of rank and title” and upon becoming wives – and therefore property – of such men, they are at the mercy of an unsympathetic society, influenced and controlled by biased individuals, that will thwart any deviance from the norm simply because of their gender. Using various tropes of the gothic genre, such as doubling, spooky settings and ghostly beings to disguise the sensitive subject of gender inequality and madness, Collins and Brontë succeed in making social commentary, though whether or not their opinions fell on deaf ears like Wollstonecraft’s, it is hard to say. Regardless, both authors do work to propel society forward on the track toward equality, as their novels likely resonated in some way with those who chose to read their stories. At the least, their books planted the seed amongst readers that women’s mental health treatment during the time was by no means satisfactory.