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In bygone centuries people tried to cure patients suffering from mental illness by throwing them in a snake pit to try and shock them back into sanity. It was a drastic treatment in which the immense terror sometimes cured the mental illness. Years have passed and medicine has evolved, but certain modern methods still rely on shocking a patient, even though more civilized means are used to inflict the shock. This is the central theme of the ‘The Snake Pit’ penned by Mary J. Ward. The story of the book is semi-autobiographical and was first published in the year 1946. This story and the subsequent film made on it were the major reasons behind initiating many reforms in the condition of state psychiatric facilities in England.
The story is about Virginia Cunningham, who suffers with a problem of nervous breakdown and loses her sanity. The story goes on to explain how she painstakingly retrieves her mental health and the problems she encounters during her journey to recovery. At first the ordeal she undergoes is explained in first person and Victoria presents an incoherent narration as she desperately fights between reality and delusion. As, her condition in the story improves the writing(which shifts to third person) presents a much coherent version about her treatment and captures vividly her restlessness and resentment, when she perceives her sanity to be much better than it actually is. At the end of the story her sanity returns completely and she rejoins her husband to lead a normal life.
The story is a grim narration of life in a mental health care institutions and it jolted the reading public into the reality of the conditions in such health care facilities during the 1940s. This book offers a peep into the way mental illness was treated 60 years ago and reminds us that though we have made remarkable advancements in the field of medicine, mental health still remains a field which is not properly understood and continues to be a social stigma.
Works Cited
Susan Doll. The snake Pit. Turner Classic movies. N.d. Retrieved from http://www.tcm.com/this-month/article/276838|0/The-Snake-Pit.html. Accessed on May 30, 2013
