Mary Jane Ward’s The Snake Pit is a semi-autobiographical novel about her/main character Virginia’s time in a mental institution in the 1940s.  Touted as an important novel of the time for bringing light to the treatment women received in these facilities, The Snake Pit is celebrated 75 years later with this re-release.

The Snake Pit is a told in a disjointed fashion, and upon reading the afterword, I learned that it was meant to resemble Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, yet of the mentally health variety.  Alice is one of my favorite books, and perhaps knowing upfront that I needed to read this book with a grain of speculation and absurdity would have made the reading process a bit more seamless.  As it were, I read too many of the passages in the literal sense, not able to bring practicality or sanity to any of it.  I honestly struggled with this book’s writing style, but I understand why Ward chose to compose her novel this way.  We are not seeing the inner workings of this mental institution in a straightforward manner because our narrator cannot see it in a straightforward manner.  We are viewing it through her eyes, which is why none of it makes sense.  It makes for a rather frustrating experience for the reader, however, to have no solid ground upon which to stand.