Money, Marriage, and Madness: The Life of Anna Ott (Disability Histories)

Money, Marriage, and Madness is a story of the medical profession, a woman’s wealth and the gendered property laws in which she operated, marital violence, marriage and divorce, institutional incarceration, and an alleged bank robbery. Dr. Anna B. Miesse Ott lived in a legal context governing money, marriage, and madness that nearly all nineteenth-century women shared. She benefited from wealth, professional status as a physician, and whiteness, but they did not protect her from the vulnerabilities generated by sexism and ableism. After an 1856 marriage and divorce, Ott served for nearly twenty years as a physician in Madison, Wisconsin and garnered additional wealth. In 1873, her husband and local physicians testified to her insanity, as well as her legal incompetency, and Ott entered the gates of the Wisconsin State Hospital for the Insane where she remained until her 1893 death. Her decades of institutionalization reveal daily life in a late nineteenth-century asylum and the permeability of its walls. Tracing the stories told of her after her death enables analyses of the impact of the diagnosis of mania and institutionalization on our memory of her. In addition, this book explores historical methods, ethics, and dilemmas confronted when historical sources are limited and come not from the subject but from those with greater power. 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. Historical and institutional structures, like her whiteness and 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. | Cover Title Page Copyright Contents Acknowledgments Introduction 1. Mrs. Anna Miesse, Local Doctor's Wife 2. The Questions of 1855 3. Miesse v. Miesse, 1856 4. The Questions of 1856 5. Dr. Anna B. Ott, Local Doctress 6. Anna Ott, Insane Asylum Inmate 7. Anna Ott, Economic Agent 8. Remembering Anna Ott Notes Bibliography Index Back Cover |"Kim Nielsen's Money, Marriage, and Madness: The Life of Anna Ott is a brief, beautifully written, and wholly original biography. . . . As Nielsen tells Ott's life story, she examines the relationship between interlocking power structures—race, gender, class, ability, and settler colonialism—and personal circumstances. . . . A wonderful read." — Indiana Magazine of History "Nielsen brilliantly contrasts the differences that occurred once Ott swiveled from doctor to patient . . . a powerful way of backing into the story of a life that would otherwise be completely lost." — Annals of Iowa "Ott's story is both compelling in itself and revealing about the broader society she inhabited." — Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel | 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 . "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"-- Provided by publisher