Published 9th June 2022 by Bloomsbury.
From the cover of the book:
In 1887 young Nellie Bly sets out for New York and a career in journalism, determined to make her way as a serious reporter, whatever that may take.But life in the city is tougher than she imagined. Down to her last dime and desperate to prove her worth, she comes up with a dangerous plan: to fake insanity and have herself committed to the asylum that looms on Blackwell's Island. There, she will work undercover to document - and expose - the wretched conditions faced by the patients.
But when the asylum door swings shut behind her, she finds herself in a place of horrors, governed by a harshness and cruelty she could never have imagined. Cold, isolated and starving, her days of terror reawaken the traumatic events of her childhood. She entered the asylum of her own free will - but will she ever get out?
An extraordinary portrait of a woman way ahead of her time, Madwoman is the story of a quest for the truth that changed the world.
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From a very young age, Elizabeth Jane Cochran, known to all as 'Pink', knew she wanted more than the things society deemed appropriate for those of her sex. Encouraged to get an education by her judge father, and inspired by the stories of her mother, she spent hours reading about the world, developing her perceptive skills, and jotting down imaginative tales. At times she was overwhelmed by dark thoughts, but it was her dear wish to study the law like her father before her, and he promised to support her in endeavours.
When Pink's father died unexpectedly, leaving her family unprovided for, her dreams were snatched away. Reeling from the loss of her beloved husband, Pink's mother fell under the spell of ne'er do well Jack Ford, and entered into a violent second marriage that put her and her children under the power of a man quick to temper who made their lives miserable. It was a period that scarred the young Pink, convincing her that marriage and motherhood were definitely not for her.
Following her mother's scandalous divorce, Pink settled in Pittsburgh with her family, forced to undergo gruelling domestic work that paid wages far below those that her brothers could earn, and it opened her eyes to how difficult it was for women to support themselves. A blistering letter to the local paper opened up a rare opportunity for her to become a female journalist, covering the seldom reported lives of ordinary folk - especially women. Her new persona 'Nellie Bly' was born, and she discovered she had a talent for writing insightful pieces that encouraged debate and divided opinion, particularly around women's rights.
In 1887, Bly moved to New York to pursue her journalistic ambitions. Determined to prove what she was capable of, she managed to get a foot inside the door of the illustrious New York Times, vowing to get herself admitted to the notorious Blackwell's Island lunatic asylum to investigate the rumoured horrific conditions that inmates were forced to endure. The Times could not refuse such a scoop, and promised her a job if she could pull it off.
It was easy enough to gain access to the harsh cruelty and privation meted out to the sorry souls who found themselves confined to Blackwell's Island, with the sketchiest tale of woe, but not quite so simple to get released, even though Bly was sane - a quality she shared with many of the woman who had been committed to the asylum's care by their friends and relations. This is Nellie Bly's story...
Madwoman is an incredible feat of literature that displays Louisa Treger's impressive ability to mix fact and fiction in a way that really brings her characters alive - this time turning her attention towards the incredible Nellie Bly, whose quest to break the chains imposed on women changed the world in more ways that one.
Nellie Bly was someone born with the fire to fight injustice. Encouraged by her doting father, and influenced by the mystical Native American tales of her mother, she grew up to believe she could achieve much more than the expectation of marriage and motherhood laid out for her by Victorian society. She was right, of course, but it took more than one astounding feat of determination, and every bit of her considerable insight and courage, to win herself the freedom to follow her ambitions.
Treger follows Bly from young childhood, exploring the events that shaped her into the feminist firebrand she blossomed into, and she paints her as a realistic character with vulnerabilities beneath the tough exterior she created in order to survive. Bly's path was a difficult one, and her story takes you through a heady range of heart-pounding emotions as you follow her tragedies and triumphs. Her strength of character drives you along and she really gets under your skin, especially since she was compelled to take on a task that almost broke her to prove she was capable of being a serious journalist.
Bly spent just ten days within in the women's asylum on Blackwell's Island, but the conditions she experienced were more than enough to bring her to the brink of her own sanity, even though she was fit, healthy and sane when she arrived. Treger does not shy away from describing every shocking moment that Bly endured, detailing the brutality of the unqualified nursing staff; the disinterestedness of the senior officials; and the woefully inadequate, if well intentioned, attempts of the frequently changing junior doctors to 'cure' their patients.
The awful intensity of those ten days, with the aching misery of the women in the asylum, and the way it provokes the terrors of Bly's own traumatic childhood to resurface, are difficult things to read about. Most shockingly, it is the narratives of the women consigned to the asylum for reasons that have nothing to do with insanity that are the most painful to examine - the women sent to this pit of despair simply because they refused to conform to a world ruled by men... the 'difficult' women.
History records that Bly did find a way to regain her freedom, and went on to be the catalyst for change in the care for the insane, and the shameful fate of the 'difficult' women falsely deemed mad, through her efforts to expose what went on on Blackwell's Island. Despite knowing this, Treger's writing is so immersive that you feel every perilous second of the trauma she is subjected to during her stay in the asylum, and the conviction that she is doomed to succumb to its grinding degradation is very real indeed.
I am overjoyed that Treger has chosen to tell Bly's tale in this book, which I absorbed in one glorious sitting, as her magnificent achievements should to be much more widely known. She really was an astounding woman, who refused to be defined by the expectations of others, and went on to prove time and time again that whatever a man could do, she could do not only equally well, but sometimes better.
Madwoman is one of those brilliant books about forgotten women that are making their way steadfastly into the best-seller lists in recent years - something that I wholeheartedly applaud. This is the perfect way for Nellie Bly to step into the limelight for a contemporary audience, and I hope to see this book fly off the shelves!
Madwoman is available to buy now in hardcover, ebook and audio book formats.
Thank you to Louisa Treger for kindly sending me a finished copy of this book, in return for an honest review.
About the author:
She subsequently turned to literature, earning a Ph.D. in English at University College London, where she focused on early-twentieth-century women's writing and was awarded the West Scholarship 'for distinguished work in the study of English Language and Literature.'
Louisa's first novel, The Lodger, was published in 2014, and her second novel, The Dragon Lady, was published by Bloomsbury in 2019. She lives in London.
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