Insanity, rhetoric and women : nineteenth-century women's asylum narratives
Abstract
Among reform movements in nineteenth-century America was insane asylum reform and
women played a role in this. Some women within the walls of asylums living as patients
turned to the pen as a means of informing the public about confinement laws and the
treatment of inmates. Throughout the nineteenth century more than a dozen women
published their asylum stories in print for others to see. Most often women writing these
asylum narratives protested their confinement, asserted their sanity, and depicted abuse. Three women writing about asylum life in the mid-late nineteenth century turned to
multiple genres in their texts. While each text is distinctly different from the others, all three
authors were rhetorically savvy using every means available for sharing their experience and
that of other inmates. Elizabeth Parsons Ware Packard, Lemira Clarissa Pennell, and Clarissa
Caldwell Lathrop all offer their readers insight into how women perceived their lives behind
insane asylum walls. Packard used her writing as a foundation in campaigning state
legislatures for changes in confinement laws, especially as they applied to women. Her
reliance on the language of True Womanhood is evident and powerful as she turns to
acceptable genres for women in the mid-nineteenth century. Pennell turned to the popular
nineteenth-century genre of the scrapbook piecing together her experience as a sanitary reformer, a mother, and a woman living in a changing nation. Lathrop's narrative reflects the
ideals of the independent New Woman at the turn of the century. Her use of more than one
genre highlights ways in which women of the late nineteenth century had more access and
agency than those locked in the image of the True Woman. Women writing multi-genre
asylum narratives appear in the nineteenth century in unique ways and continue into the
twenty-first century.
Table of Contents
Introduction -- Rising discontent: conflicting beliefs in American insane asylums -- The multiple languages of Elizabeth Parsons Ware Packard in Modern Persecution or Insane Asylums Unveiled -- Scraps here and there: Lemira Clarissa Pennell's "Precedents" and Explanations: Memorial Scrap Book a Book of Personalities -- It's all about facts: Clarissa Caldwell Lathrop's A Secret Institution -- Afterword
Degree
Ph.D.