Book Review - Mental Illness

The Snake Pit

By Mary Jane Ward

1946

Carnival of Lost Souls

Going down into the Snake Pit with Virginia Cunningham, an amateur novelist with plenty imagination, is an exercise in being trapped.  The events that take place and the people encountered drive Virginia sideways, backwards and diagonal before allowing her any forward progress.  The writing gives the feel of participation, as if you the reader are a patient inside the mental institution with Virginia.  You experience her feelings of agitation, vulnerableness and instability.  Snake Pit is not a feel good book as the voices both real and imagined get into your head.

The Snake Pit is an exercise in finding one's way out of a dark place full of nightmarish treatments and untrustworthy fellow passengers. The fear, uncertainty and longing to get out and return home to normalcy with a loving spouse, away from the institution's carnival of lost souls, starts to become a distant, hopeless fantasy. V. Cunningham, the patient, holds the key to not only her release but yours.  

The closer she gets to unlocking the door, the more fearful she becomes of pleasing her husband and the world outside.  Meanwhile, you the reader are ready to leave immediately upon arrival.  Like I said, not a feel good story, but one that's very unique in its telling and hard to stay away from. Because of the difficulty and confusion in reading the early parts where Virginia is not sure where or who she is, it takes extra effort on the reader's part to stick with her through the disoriented episodes.

After reading Snake Pit I agree with this statement in the book:

You wanted to get well.  You never had a conscious moment in which you were not aware of being sick.  You could no more, while conscious, forget your sickness than you could forget to breathe.  Asked your greatest wish in life you would have replied at once - sanity.  While people in the outside world longed to be millionaires, movie actors, club presidents and even novelists, nowhere, but nowhere save in a madhouse, did mental health get its share of prayers.

"Long ago they lowered insane persons into snake pits;

they thought that an experience that might drive a

 sane person out of his wits might send an insane

person back into sanity."


The 1948 film by the same name led to changes in conditions in mental institutions in the United States.  Excellent Movie featuring Olivia de Havilland, Celeste Holm, Leif Erickson.