Nellie Bly
Day one:
It is dark. Is it childish, to be afraid of the dark? Is it cowardly to be scared of silence? I had expected screams. They told me to expect screams. Every voice in my ear whispered you will not make it out alive.
In the court they barely gave me a second glance, just another girl to toss away, into the madhouse. They told me it happensall the time. Women go mad every day. It’s in their nature. I barely even had to act.
I think, if I had been completely myself in their eyes, I would still be here. My plan worked all too well, with my far away eyes and vacant expression.
But what to do now? I hadn’t planned past this point, but I know my job is to collect. Like shiny objects I will sift through the facts, the figures, and show the secrets to the world, but how do I make it through the next day? Once I’ve gathered what I need, how do I make it out?
Will I ever make it out?
Maria Anna Mozart
“We know that [Maria Anna] composed because even in some of [his] letters, Mozart compliments her on her music.”
I hear them in my dreams
It was all fun and games until the Illusion
shattered and
Life crept in around the edges
They scream at me to stop but I cannot Let
go of the music, this is
Ours — like brother, like sister — but I
Was always one step behind, once It
started.
Nellie Bly
Day two:
Why did I ever agree to this? It’s not as if I had no choice, after all I could’ve very well declined. But this was my only shot, to break into the world I’ve watched the men work in for so long, shunning me to the side, with my “fragile mind.” After all, they say a woman must stay silent.
All the people I’ve met thus far seem mostly sane. Saner than I’ve pretended to be, at least. They terrify me more than babbling madwomen ever could. If I can’t get out of here by being “returned to my senses,” how am I to leave at all? My editor said he’d get me out if necessary, but for all his seeming kindness, I can’t trust him. True, he may be different from the rest, with their dismissing waves, and amused chuckles at the thought of ‘a woman! writing a news article!’ but I don’t believe he’s different enough from the rest to break me out of here if it inconveniences him.
I sincerely hope I’m wrong.
Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven
You walk past me and are unsettled, don’t deny it. You scream in your brain who is that woman, dressed so atrociously? Why does her outfit sound like shrieking in my head? you do not know why but I do.
Each day I walk out of my apartment to stares. It’s probably the postage stamps that do it — one on each cheek, my shaved head bursting with all the hues anyone could imagine. Every day I shout with my appearance: down with societal norms, with silence, with ignorance. They say a woman should stay silent, so I scream at them with every aspect of myself: my outward appearance a manifestation of all the bottled-up rage of the women who came before me.
My screams and theirs echo from the lime green jacket, the spotted belt, the tattered purse, ever rhinestone inlaid in the crease of my lid.
Nellie Bly
Day three:
My stomach rumbles in the dark of the room, they gave us no water today and barely any food. Now I see why most of the women here look hollow, they are half starved. Is this my fate, if I am not rescued? Yesterday the thin nightgown they gave me upon arrival was enough but tonight the cold seeps into my bones. My hands are trembling, and I cannot see, for the moon is covered byclouds. I simply hope that I will be able to get out of here someday, but how long will he wait?
My worst fear is forever.
Molly Keane
Change your name Erase
your identity They can
never know
Who crafted those words Writing
is something to hide
A woman should stay silent they say, and I
should not, cannot, will not
Take the fall.
Nellie Bly
Day four:
I am beginning to see it now, what happens here. Today I saw a little girl asking for food, there was barely anything left on her bones, but the nurses refused her. This is the actual insanity, not within the patients but within those in charge who feel it is perfectly fine to keep people under these deplorable conditions, she kept crying and they hit her simply to get her to stop, of courseshe simply cried louder, I wanted to yell, she was just a child, but I stayed silent, a woman should stay silent, if I ever leave this place I swear to never be silent again.
But for now, I must stay quiet, because it’s the silence that keeps you alive.
Maria Anna Mozart
“To answer the question of how much Nannerl influenced Wolfgang musically, I would say not at all,”
Once, ivory was mine.
Once, the praise was mine
I was supposed to be the joy, the
Pride, but then he shot
Out of the dark, into the Daylight,
I should’ve never Shared, for now
it’s
All I am able to do.
That once was me, standing to
Thunderous applause, shouts Of
joy like lightning through my
Bones, that could be me still That
they praise, that they Look to,
that should be my Music, my
lifeblood
But he has stolen
All I once had, joy replaced with
Responsibility, they scream unfit, it’s
Unfair, I counter but only in my mind,
after all a
Woman should stay silent, they say.
Nellie Bly
Day five:
They don’t come in here mad. And they don’t leave here mad either, it’s the in-between, this place makes them mad, I met a girl today whose husband committed her here simply because he wanted to be rid of her, before she was a bright girl of twenty-three now after four years she looks somehow closer to sixty and five at the same time as slim as a child but as weary as an adult is this my fate I don’t want it I don’t want it let me out let me out let me out-
Zelda Fitzgerald
A recipe for disaster
1 country club dance—caught his eye from across the room and glided over—a first meeting that was always the first mistake.
This Slice of Paradise—A harbinger of doomed marriage, doomed fame, doomed spending, doomed love.
The Great Gatsby —A failure at the start, he turned to anger, away from me, it was the beginning of the longest end.
Phipps Psychiatric Clinic – Away from home, away from him, I am safe. At last I can rest, not walking on eggshells and ice.
Tender is the Night – “Zelda read the early draft of [his] novel and was distraught; she was placed under constant supervision for fear she would take her own life.”
Save Me the Waltz – A thievery he claims, of my own life, says I should’ve stayed silent, but I made it — us — immortal before he could swoop in and steal.
$750 monthly worth of medical bills from mental clinics —an extravagant amount for the times, for a struggling author. Escalatedtensions, how absurd he said that he should have to pay for my well-being.
One fire in Asheville hospital —The end, in flames and smoke and a room locked from the outside. I didn’t even try to fight the flame.
Nellie Bly
Day six:
The mad are those who point fingers at others for madness, take pleasure in the pain, the husbands, judges, fathers, nurses who hurt these girls. Not us women. We are the only ones within this whole place that are perfectly free of madness.
Molly Keane
Three years of silence but this is My
return, from the depths of Despair
and the sea
From failure to something new
A woman should stay silent they said but I Never
shall.
Nellie Bly
Day seven:
I will die if I have to stay here any longer.
If the scream building in my throat will not release.
If I must stay quiet for even one more minute, I’ll shrivel up and explode.
Maria Anna Mozart
“We know that various composers, including Bach, copied other people’s music and then put their name on it.”
There is nothing.
Nothing left of me, they do not
Know me but he is celebrity, they have never even Heard my
name. It is mine, do you hear me?
The works you praise, they seeped from my
Fingertips and quill ink like
Pieces of my soul, you can tell The
lifeless from the living, the Magic
from the music. Can’t you? Can’t
you tell?
It is mine.
Nellie Bly
Day eight:
When I leave this place, I swear I will help these people. It’s the only thing I have left. The only thing that keeps me going. I will break free. I will tell the world. I will save them.
Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven
Who’s that madwoman; they whisper when they think I cannot
hear. Didn’t you know? She ran off to the circus when she was just a girl. Her
second husband died. I hear she’s the reason why.
She’s the one with the “art.” As if twisted metal could even be called as much. And her
studio? Filled with junk, that woman is a hoarder I swear…
Arrested for shoplifting
Wore men’s clothing Can
you believe…
And then with a scoff, they turn away.
Nellie Bly
Day nine:
I will break free. I will tell the world. I will save them. I will break free. I will tell the world. I will save them. I will do it for Mary whose husband wished to be rid of her, for Sarah who simply wanted another bite of food, for every woman who should never have been forced to come here. I will break free. I will tell the world. I will save them. I will break free. I will tell the world. I will save them. I will break free I will break free, break FREE I WILL BREAK FREE I WILL I WILL I WILL IWILLWILLWILL-
Molly Keane
Sweep your skeletons under the closet All
under the guise of glamour but I see Your
mysteries, your secrets, all hidden By a
thinning film of good behaviour.
Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven
“The real point of the readymades was to deny the possibility of defining art”
I can barely walk through my apartment any longer, filled with treasures. A tin can, a tire part, a tattered lampshade, a moth-eaten dress, a broken vase. Most would call it junk, but these items know me. They know what it’s like to be shunned, forgotten. This is my art, though most would not call it that.
Set them apart and they perplex and enchant. The dress reminds a bride of her wedding day, the forgotten like she thought her husband had been by her. Or perhaps a memory of a girl’s first prom, where her dress was torn by heavy hands.
Set them together and they tell a story. A broken red crayon, a scribble drawing, various makeup products and a checkbookarranged on a desk tell the story of a child forced to grow up too soon. Or perhaps an adult longing for their childhood.
The human mind will find meaning in anything, even the smallest nudge can elicit the strongest reactions from some. And humanity is both incredibly creative and vain.
And incredibly blind to shun my work, unrecognized as the masterpieces they are.
Nellie Bly
Day ten:
The dark crowds around me, it is hopeless, I can never leave, I will slowly spiral into madness, my silence is festering, it is the real disease, there is nobody coming, nobody to take me away….
After
Ten days in a madhouse. That’s the title we finally decided on, the Washington Post and I. They did it. What I never expected. Just as I had lost hope, they got me out, sending an attorney to explain. I was shoved out of the asylum, stumbled onto my newfound freedom, and that very night I began to write.
I would not be silent any longer. I wrote about everything I saw, witnessed, all the inhumane conditions and cruelty.
The article was a hit.
All around the world people read it and went “really? Is this true?” And then they, or at least the important people, did some digging
And found out that yes, it was.
Yes, there were women committed to an insane asylum for no reason other than their husbands wished to be rid of them.
Yes, there were places that were supposed to be for healing but were accomplishing the exact opposite.
And once I spoke, I didn’t stop there. I wrote articles, petitioned for better conditions, talked to mayors, governors, and officials.
When the Washington Post expired, I even wrote a book of my very own, with the name Nellie Bly on the cover and spine, to prove that I could not, would not be silenced again. I came, I saw, and I spoke.