ABSTRACT
Virginia Cunningham, the protagonist of Mary Jane Ward's autobiographical novel The Snake Pit, was committed to Juniper Hill Hospital by her husband, Robert Cunningham. Virginia had no idea why she had been locked up and pleaded with Dr. Kik, her psychiatrist, to let her return to her apartment in New York. There are thousands of first-person accounts of madness or hospitalization like these. But only tiny minorities of patients have managed to get their experiences out to a broad audience. Even those with powerful connections or distinguished reputations have had to fight to make their stories known. Daniel Paul Schreber, the presiding judge of the Court of Appeal in Dresden, Germany, in the 1890s, wrote his now classic Memoirs of My Nervous Illness during his hospitalization. Chapters in The Plea for the Silent are articulate and poignant depictions of the ironies of life in the asylum.
