Nellie Bly and Challenging Traditional Ideas of Gender and Class
Women were not bystanders in the process of cultural change as is often believed,1 as Kathy Peiss details in her book Cheap Amusements: Working Women and Leisure in Turn-of-the-Century New York, by the 1880s “women had pushed a gender-based ideology of domesticity, moral guardianship, and sisterhood from the realm of home and family into the public arena.”2 While still very much restricted to the ideology of domesticity, women were being accepted in the broader realm, providing new opportunities for women such as Nellie Bly to challenge ideas surrounding gender and class within the public arena. Nellie Bly was among the first stunt reporters recognized for her direct challenging of traditional ideas of gender and class. In her article “A Plucky Woman,” published in the Pittsburg Dispatch on May 31, 1885, Bly states that it is shameful that in “this enlightened age there are many who think all labor, except housework, belittles a woman, and who look with holy horror on one who has courage enough to leave the regular routine laid down for the fairer sex and enter the manlier domain.”3 In an interview with Miss. E.H. Ober, Bly asked Ober on her opinion on women entering public life, to which Ober detailed “Women are just like men—some may be fitted for a position that another could not fill; but I say, what they can do, let them. If they have energy and pluck to start out and take care of themselves, they should be praised for doing so.”4 As a reporter, Bly was willing to ask questions of her subjects and herself, regarding a woman’s place in society, and challenge existing stereotypes on the limitations of being a woman.
Nellie Bly offered a unique female perspective and challenge of traditional gender roles, in a time when the newspaper industry was dominated by men. While Bly never called herself a feminist or suffragette, she did write stories providing her own analysis on the place of women in society, offering a counternarrative to male perspectives and instilling a greater acceptance of feminine influence in society. In her article “Nellie Bly with the Female Suffragists” published on January 26, 1896, Bly offers an account of the Suffragists’ convention, a meeting which was covered by numerous male reporters from a variety of newspapers. What makes Bly’s perspective unique, is her depiction of the suffragists not as radicals, but as women who do not differ in any major respect from women with lesser ambitions, and are instead giving voice to something they believe in.5 By placing herself within the action, Bly notes that she prefers women’s conventions as they are “spicy and unique and, heaven knows, improved. For if there is anything stupid in this world it is a political convention. I believe that's the only kind men have to themselves.”6 Bly follows the course of the meeting highlighting the individual women who spoke and emphasizing Susan B. Anthony as a strong and respectable figure. By demonstrating respect for the suffragists and their cause, Nellie Bly offers an open minded narrative that sheds these women in a different public light, noting that while women suffragists must be cautious in their pushback, they are skilled in literary and intellectual debates, all they need is an audience that will take their message to heart.7 As Bly wrote about women in general, “some few women can be named who have bravely struck out according to their own pleasure, and have succeeded. Honor to them. If there were more the world would be better.”8
Regarding class, Bly is most well recognized for her transgression of traditional class lines during her time in the Blackwell’s institution. The story that sparked major reform efforts in New York began with public interest in Bly’s ability to cross social and cultural boundaries.9 In Bly’s transformation from a “free woman assumed to be sane to incarcerated woman assumed to be insane,”10 Bly adopted an identity as Nellie Moreno, claiming to speak Spanish and ultimately displacing her whiteness and inherent privilege. Thereby, Nellie Bly facilitated the loss of her own freedom.11 By adopting a new identity that reinforced assumed differences of class and race, Bly defied traditional standards of womanhood and entered a realm off-limits to middle-class white women.12 Therefore, Bly’s writing offered a new perspective on the treatment of individuals of differing classes and races to an audience confined to their respective positions within society. Bly’s undercover reporting further illustrates the ways in which class consciousness differentiated groups of women within society, examining in particular the harsh treatment of lower class and ethnic individuals.13 As demonstrated through Bly’s time at Blackwell’s, the facade Bly created played into stereotypical relations between classes and genders, leading her not to be suspected. However, she utilized these traditional boundaries to analyze the abuse experienced by women, and individuals of lower classes and ethnic backgrounds, to instead develop public reform efforts.
Bly’s reform-oriented reporting helped address distinctions in the treatment between different classes in societies, and pushed the broader public to question the woman’s role and public involvement. By crossing the traditional line of ethics to expose the abuse experienced by women and individuals of lower classes, Bly directly established social reform efforts and entrenched herself as a “change agent on behalf of womankind.”14 As Puja Vengadasalam writes in her article “Dislocating the Masculine: How Nellie Bly Feminised Her Reports,” “Bly’s nose for news and ability to feminise her articles unabashedly empowered her to conquer gender barriers.”15
Footnotes
1. Kathy Lee Peiss, Cheap Amusements: Working Women and Leisure in Turn-of-the-Century New York (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2014), 8.
2. Peiss, Cheap Amusements, 165-166.
3. Nellie Bly, “A Plucky Woman,” The Pittsburg Dispatch, May 31, 1885, https://thegrandarchive.wordpress.com/a-plucky-woman/.
4. Bly, “A Plucky Woman,” May 31, 1885.
5. Nellie Bly, “Nellie Bly with the Female Suffragists,” The New York World, January 26, 1896, p. 4, http://suffrageandthemedia.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/BLY-FultonHistoryNYWorld26Jan1896p4-New-York-NY-World-1896-c-0414.pdf, 4.
6. Bly, “Nellie Bly with the Female Suffragists,” January 26, 1896, 4.
7. Bly, “Nellie Bly with the Female Suffragists,” January 26, 1896, 4.
8. Bly, “A Plucky Woman,” May 31, 1885.
9. Lutes, “Into the Madhouse with Nellie Bly,” 223.
10. Lutes, “Into the Madhouse with Nellie Bly,” 226.
11. Lutes, “Into the Madhouse with Nellie Bly,” 227.
12. Lutes, “Into the Madhouse with Nellie Bly,” 228.
13. Peiss, Cheap Amusements, 64.
14. Vengadasalam, “Dislocating the Masculine: How Nellie Bly Feminised Her Reports,” 456.
15. Vengadasalam, “Dislocating the Masculine: How Nellie Bly Feminised Her Reports,” 456.