Review: 'Money, Marriage, and Madness: The Life of Anna Ott' by Kim E. Nielsen

Since reading The Great Pretender by Susannah Clark and hearing about Nellie Bly's exposé on mental institutions in the late 1800s, I have been equally fascinated and horrified by the ease with which women ended up in mental institutions. Hence, I was very interested in Nielsen's book the moment I saw it. Her tale of Anna Ott definitely helped elucidate my understanding. Thanks to the University of Illinois Press and NetGalley for providing me with a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Pub. Date: 12/06/2020
Publisher: University of Illinois Press

A female physician battling oppression and the law in the nineteenth-century Midwest

Anna Ott died in the Wisconsin State Hospital for the Insane in 1893. She had enjoyed status and financial success first as a physician’s wife and then as the only female doctor in Madison. Throughout her first marriage, attempts to divorce her abusive second husband, and twenty years of institutionalization, Ott determinedly shaped her own life.

Kim E. Nielsen explores a life at once irregular and unexceptional, revealing a woman whose whiteness and privileged place in society still failed to protect her. Historical and institutional structures, like laws that liberalized divorce and women's ability to control their property, opened up uncommon possibilities for Ott. Other structures, from domestic violence in the home to rampant sexism and ableism outside of it, remained a part of even affluent women's lives. Money, Marriage, and Madness tells a forgotten story of how the legal and medical cultures of the time shaped one woman—and what her life tells us about power and society in nineteenth century America.

Kim E. Nielsen is a professor and director of the disability studies program at the University of Toledo. Her books include A Disability History of the United States and Beyond the Miracle Worker: The Remarkable Life of Anne Sullivan Macy and Her Extraordinary Friendship with Helen Keller.

During 2020 I  became more and more interested in exploring various historical female perspectives. Where the origin for this lies I'm not entirely sure, but I have come to realize that sometimes the detailed view of one particular life can give you an impression of the larger issues at play during any particular time. When reading about, for example, women's rights or civil rights, it can happen that the larger implications are hard to understand unless they're personified. As a kid I was aware women hadn't had the right I enjoyed previously, but I didn't quite understand the indignity behind it until my grandmother shared some of her own experiences. Similarly, the atrocities of slavery and segregation can be known but made more acute through direct, personal narratives. For me, Money, Marriage, and Madness was one of those reads that brought a slice of history a little closer.

Anna Ott was definitely a fascinating woman. She was many things to many different people. A female doctor in a time when they were very rare on the ground. A mother. A wife, a divorcee, and then a wife again, this time to an abuser. Of immigrant origins. Highly educated. Determined. Beleaguered. Declared insane. Reading through her life story, with all its ups and downs brought together expertly by Kim E. Nielsen, you can't help but end up feeling an affinity for her. It is hard to tell whether she would have thrived in a more permissible society, but it was clear that she chafed at the constant impositions placed on her aspirations. Whether it was traveling abroad, running her own doctor's practice, or suing her second husband for divorce multiple times, playing by the rules was not in her interest. When she was finally sent to the Wisconsin State Hospital for the Insane, less is known about her except for steady receipts showing her making life as comfortable as possible for herself. The fact she ended up there at all is rage-inducing and Nielsen doesn't shy away from any of the facts. Insane asylums were convenient storing places for wives and daughters who had become a nuisance and you'd be amazed to find out just how long that went on and who can be accused of doing so. (Looking at you, Charles Dickens!). Money, Marriage, and Madness shows the lives of many through the life of Anna Ott and thereby grants us all a very important insight. 

Kim E. Nielsen does a brilliant job piecing together the life of a woman who only exists to us in scraps. As she states in her introduction, it is not truly possible to know what exactly was going on as women's lives, especially the lives of those who ended up insane asylums, weren't exactly recorded. So Nielsen works of court documents, newspaper clippings, receipts, anything she can find. From this she crafts a thorough narrative that both informs on Anna Ott and uses Anna Ott to explain the wider circumstances for American women in the 1800s. As mentioned earlier, it can be hard to really understand the limitations upon women until you see them laid out so clearly as in this book. You will rage and you will be exasperated, and then you will be grateful to all the previous feminists for what they've done. And then you'll look around and see what is still going on and be outraged all over again. But that is the point of history, to see how things repeat themselves but also to see how a cycle can be broken. I'm very grateful for authors like Nielsen who put the effort into shining a light into the recesses of forgotten history and salvage what they can. Despite its topic, Money, Marriage, and Madness is a joy to read and never feels like dry history. As far as historical biographies go, Nielsen created a winner that will be sure to inform and engage many.

I give this book...

4 Universes.

Anyone with an interest in the opportunities for and limitations on women will find Money, Marriage, and Madness a fascinating read. Well-written and well-researched, Nielsen's biography brings a forgotten woman to life.