Essay Questions

What is the great irony of the way that the author behaved while undercover as a mentally disturbed woman?

Chapter One ends with a startling announcement by the author. Keep in mind that this is a book about a woman pretending to be mentally unbalanced enough to enter an insane asylum in the 1880’s. Thanks to movies, books and TV shows, we all have an image of what such a place must have been like, but the author was entertain completely alien territory. Even more to the point, when she took the assignment she still believed that the horror stories that had been told about them were highly exaggerated. So, not really knowing how the people sent to an asylum behaved, she really had little idea how to “act crazy.” And so she make a choice that turned out to be shockingly ironic: “From the moment I entered the insane ward on the Island, I made no attempt to keep up the assumed role of insanity. I talked and acted just as I do in ordinary life.”

How does the author prepare for the convince those working in the asylum that she is mad?

The preparations that the author makes for entry into the madhouse is really a testament to how far things have come since the 19th century on the subject of expansion of knowledge which had previously been relegated to a precious few. Bly in a sense looks upon mission in the way that actor would prepare for a part. Today, of course, actors have access to detailed information about the things like how asylums were run in the 19th century, but consider what limited access Bly had at the time. She herself admits to never having been in proximity to actual insane people and that she “had not the faintest idea of what their actions were like.” As a result, she entered the asylum playing the role of crazy as a result of preparation limited to what little she had read about them. Most amazingly this information basically revolved completely around one single physical component that signified madness: “having staring eyes.”

What is the initial diagnosis upon examination by a doctor inside the asylum and how does he arrive at this diagnosis?

Keep in mind that the author was merely pretending to be “insane” and with the most laughably lack of any actual knowledge of what insanity looks like to professional doctors. Nevertheless, after examining her, a doctor professes her to be “positively demented” and “a hopeless case.” And what, exactly, led to this astonishing diagnosis? A physical inspection of Bly in the same state as he found her and some questions. Among the questions were things like where she came from, what she calls home, what she does in New York, and the insinuation that she was a prostitute. Oh, and the doctor also measured her pulse and inspected her tongue. Little wonder that she would write afterward how this experience led her to “have a smaller regard for the ability of doctors…and a greater one for myself.”