Blanche Monnier’s Anonymous Rescue Letter
Blanche also never acting violent or lashed out at any of the doctors or nurses. She was calm, and very grateful to have been saved. Tragically, she never got to see her lover again. He had died in 1885.
Her mother was found guilty of her crimes, and she was sent to jail. But she was so old, she died only 15 days after her capture. Her brother was given a sentence of a year in jail, but he was a lawyer, so he knew how to protect himself. He appealed the charges, and was able to go free.
Blanche was able to put on some weight at the hospital, but after being in solitary confinement for 25 years, they say she had lost her mind. She also had nowhere else to go. She was 50 years old, and could not very likely find a husband and move on with her life, and she sure wasn’t going to move back in with her brother. She was sent to live in the Blois Psychiatric Hospital, where she died in 1913.
Looking back, some people debate whether Blanche Monnier was truly insane or not. After all, she could have lied to her mom for the sake of getting out of the room, and then she could have run away with her boyfriend. Others believe that she was perfectly sane before going into the attic, and the solitary confinement drove her to become insane in the dark. There have been studies to theorize that Blanche was showing signs of bad behavior long before the incident, but much of it could be chalked up to teenage angst and rebellion.
While this is a shocking case of abuse, it begs the question- how many women were put into similar situations, only for them to cave within 24 hours and agree to break off a relationship? How long had violence and torture been used to oppress women from making their own choices? Since these family matters always happened behind closed doors, we really may never know.
Where did we find this stuff? Here are our sources:
How Marriage Has Changed Over Centuries. The Week. January 11, 2015
‘Spinster’ and ‘Bachelor’ Were, Until 2005, Official Terms for Single People. Kat Eschner. Smithsonian Magazine. September 2017
The Story of the French Socialite Who Was Locked Away For a Quarter of a Century, 1876. HistoryDaily. 2016.
Nineteenth-Century French Working Women: Love, Marriage and Children. Kelly Grear. University of Kentucky.
The Woman in the Attic the True Story of Blanche Monnier. Jennifer Morgan. 2017
The Case of Blanche Monnier. Providentia. October 2016
