Diagnosing history

It was a recipe for tragedy. In 1875, Mary Todd Lincoln was put on public trial for insanity by her sole surviving son, Robert. She was found guilty and committed to an asylum, where she was remained incarcerated against her will for months. Even today she is remembered, if indeed she is remembered at all, as “crazy.”

Ruth Graham’s article in Slate Magazine examines the split verdict among historians over whether Mary was a woman dangerously ahead of her time, or truly mentally ill, perhaps bipolar. Like Ms. Graham, I don’t see these as exclusionary. Too often the mentally ill, whether actively sick or not, are defined by that one characteristic. This is the fallacy to which, I believe, arm chair historians have sometimes fallen prey.

I agree with Ms. Graham that it is possible to be both feminist and bipolar, or schizophrenic as some have said, at the same time. Mary Todd Lincoln’s problems later in life seem to have been primarily financial, indicating the manic spending which some with bipolar exhibit. However, the vast majority of shopaholics are not, in the classical sense, mentally ill. For whatever reasons she was despised by Washington society with a fervor that rivaled that directed at Rachel Jackson even before any hint of her expenditures reached public attention.

Sherry Chandler wrote eloquently the case for Mary as a woman ahead of her time. I refer you to her excellent piece for many details of her independence and individuality. She has researched and covered the subject far better than I could. Instead, I prefer to focus on the accusations of insanity, a term which I unspecific and stigmatizing.

In Mrs. Lincoln I see a woman crushed by the deaths of her children and her husband, who handled things no better than I would have in her place. I believe depression is a sane reaction to such horrific loss. But Graham also cites the case of her fascination with, and at time bizarre fervor for, fringe religion and spiritualism, as well as her chaotic travels in early widowhood, as evidence of mania. These are classical symptoms of bipolar disorder, but one episode for which she was denigrated struck too close to home.

In 1867 in a panic over her finances, she attempted to sell her wardrobe to raise money. As Graham states:

It was a humiliating disaster. One newspaper called her a “mercenary prostitute,” and one reporter sniffed that some of the gowns were sweat-stained. Critics loudly suggested that she had offered access to her husband in exchange for her expensive stash of finery. The sale made Lincoln “one of the most unpopular women in America,” according to Baker. “Only the advocates of free love, actresses, and Madame Restell, the Manhattan abortionist who dispensed French pills from her brownstone, were so notorious.”

This is all too familiar. When I am depressed myself I will refuse to eat even when I have full cupboards, so fearful am I of taking something that should be saved for my children. I won’t make phone calls for worry over the bill, and I write endless lists of the things I could pawn if I need to. But the episode that breaks my heart is how in one of her early brushes with depression my daughter Julia, who rather than ask me for help, sold her Christmas presents on EBay in the fear that she wouldn’t have enough money for groceries. I don’t think I’ll ever get beyond my grief over that.

This panic is what I see in Mary Todd Lincoln’s notorious rummage sale. That type of desperation knows no logic and I believe is truly mental illness, as much or more so than her flagrant spending. Her fear over money drove her even until her death. She lived in a series of single rooms and boarding houses to conserve funds. After years of appeals, Congress belatedly raised her allowance, but she died of a stroke before receiving the first payment. Would getting the assurance of financial support earlier have “cured” her? I doubt it. But it would have given her a small measure of comfort, and for that I judge those men harshly.

Bipolar is an popular diagnosis, a handy label to hang on those who act outside of accepted boundaries. But whether she had bipolar disorder, unipolar depression, or some sort of personality disorder, Mary Todd Lincoln was a tormented woman who suffered much in her life. She deserves better than to be written off as a crazy woman who spent too much. Historians are recognizing that. I hope that someday that compassion will work it’s way into the public consciousness.

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