I didn’t cover whether being a woman made you more likely to be considered “mad” in last week’s memorandum—“Fit to be Tied (in a Straitjacket).”
For centuries this was so, but the situation is slightly better today.
From left to right, Judy Bernly (Jane Fonda); Violet Newstead (Lily Tomlin); Franklin Hart (Dabney Coleman); and Doralee Rhodes (Dolly Parton) in a scene from the 1980 comedy (about women being demeaned in a white-collar workplace), Nine to Five.
There are more women than men in the U.S., and more women than men are college-educated.
Yet, women run only 10.4% of Fortune 500 companies; and make up only 28% of the current (118th) Congress.
(These are considered “wins” because the Fortune 500 number hovered at 8% for several years, and 28% of Congress is the highest percentage ever.)
For twenty years, 2002-2022, American women (on average) have earned about 80 cents for every dollar earned by men.
(Women sometimes begin their careers at close to wage parity, but lose ground as they age.)
When the average is broken out by race and ethnicity, Black women earned 70 cents for every dollar, and Hispanic women earned 65 cents for every dollar earned by white men.
Companies don’t want employees to discuss salaries in the workplace mainly so women won’t find out how much more men are making than women.
Essentially, there are certain viewpoints about men and women that have been accepted since Greek and Roman times.
Women are viewed as less capable of rational thought and weaker emotionally than men.
To be a real “man” is to be considered strong, logical, and capable.
To be a “woman” is the opposite.
No matter how our own experiences make these ideas ridiculous, this set of beliefs still permeates our religions and Western philosophy.
Virginia Cunningham (Olivia de Havilland) in the center of a group of patients in 1948’s The Snake Pit.
According to the IMDb trivia on this film, at least 13 states changed their mental health laws after this film was released.
When films have dealt with lobotomy, they’ve usually portrayed men: poet Samson Shilitoe in 1966’s A Fine Madness; angry veteran Randle McMurphy in 1975’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest; and traumatized US Marshall, Teddy Daniels in 2010’s Shutter Island.
However, in most countries, between 60%-75% of lobotomy patients were women.
(In the U.S., the percentage was 75%.)
Lobotomy (the process of severing the cerebral nerve tracts) was praised for making women more compliant and “feminine.”
Men have long equated female sexuality and madness,
In the 5th century BC, Hippocrates originated the term “hysteria”
(The Greek word “hystera” means “uterus.”), and “hysterical fits” have been discussed ever since.
Flemish doctor Jean Baptist van Helmont asserted, in the 1600’s, that “women are more inclined to madness, depression, and bewitching or enchantment than men because of the influence of the ‘mad raging womb.’”
In the 1860’s, British Dr. Isaac Baker Brown thought he could “correct women’s functional disorders” by removing their sexual organs (for example, the clitoris or their ovaries).
The very influential British psychiatrist Dr. Henry Maudsley claimed, in 1911, that “uterine changes lead to an unstable brain.”
In the past, asylums were used as a method to control women—especially wealthy women—enabling their male relatives to control that wealth.
(The image of the “mad” beautiful woman has long been romanticized.)
In 1799, famed English actress, author and royal mistress Mary Robinson wrote The Natural Daughter with Portraits of the Leadenhead Family, in which the lead character (Mrs. Morley) is falsely imprisoned in a madhouse.
Mrs. Morley is eventually able to free herself, and her own mother, from the asylum.
Still from 1948 film The Woman in White with Laura Fairlie (Eleanor Parker) and Count Fosco (Sydney Greenstreet).
Wilkie Collins wrote The Woman in White, in which hero Walter Hartright rescues a beautiful woman who has been drugged and carted off to an asylum, in order that her estate be inherited by Count Fosco’s friend.
The 1859 novel has been adapted multiple times.
The earliest play version was performed in 1860, and Andrew Lloyd Webber staged a musical version in 2004.
The earliest film version was a 1912 silent, and the most recent adaptation was a BBC five-part TV series in 2018.
Jessica Lange was nominated (in 1983) for a Best Actress Oscar for playing Frances Farmer in the movie Frances.
This film tells the story of Frances Farmer—a 1930’s film actress who was ostracized, institutionalized and lobotomized because she wanted to play by her own rules.
(There’s some confusion as to whether Farmer was actually lobotomized, but she was definitely held in a mental institution.)
Mary Todd Lincoln (Sally Field) in 2012’s Lincoln. Mrs. Lincoln gave birth to four sons, but only one child outlived her.
She was holding her husband’s hand when he was assassinated.
That middle class, and wealthy, women were committed to asylums in the 1800’s (mainly by close relatives)—is well documented.*
In 1876, the former First Lady, Mary Todd Lincoln, spent time in a private asylum.
Her last remaining son (Robert) had her committed because he believed she was having delusions, and because she spent money on unnecessary household goods—especially draperies and gloves.
(Mary Lincoln smuggled letters out to good lawyers, and notified the press.
After three months, she was released to the custody of her sister.)
Slowly, as the courts gave women more rights—and men had less financial control over their wives and mothers—the “tool,” of incarceration in madhouses, was used less often.
The 1974 Fair Credit Opportunity Act gave women the right to a credit card.
The Supreme Court ruling, Kirchberg vs Feenstra (1981), gave women some control of marital property, when the Louisiana “Head and Master Law” was disallowed.
(Recently, another Supreme Court ruling deprived women of their rights. In June of 2022, the Court overturned Roe vs Wade—the 1973 law which gave women the right to an abortion.)
Currently, the numbers have improved—with 50.8% of the people in mental hospitals being women—almost 50/50.
Yet, according to the National Institute of Mental Health, 27.2% of women experience mental health problems, while only 18.1% of men do.
(Perhaps, the reason is because women are more interested in changing their behavior, as well as more willing to seek help from doctors and psychiatrists.)
White, heterosexual men—especially of Northern European descent—are at the top of the caste system in American society.
Women, along with other groups and colors of people, are on lower rungs of the class structure.
As long as white men play their roles (or pretend to), they’ll keep their freedom, earn more, and retain their privileges.
Stepping outside those “norms,” however, may lead to varying degrees of social censure (including incarceration).
*Lunacy in the 19th Century: Women’s Admission to Asylums in United States of America, by Katharine Pouba and Ashley Tiamen, http://digital.library.wisc.edu/1793/6687
