Mary Jane Ward

Mary Jane Ward ( born August 27, 1905 in Fairmount, Indiana, † 17 February 1981 in Tucson, Arizona) was an American writer. It achieved popularity for her novel The Snake Pit.

Life

Mary Jane Ward came from the marriage of Claude Arthur Ward and Marion Ward, born in Lockridge. About the family of her mother she was a cousin of the writer Ross Franklin Lockridge, Jr. (* April 25, 1914, † March 6, 1948 by suicide ), the author of filmed by director Edward Dmytryk novel Raintree County.

Ward showed in childhood years, an interest in music and art. 1915 moved the family residence to Evanston (Illinois ). At the age of fourteen she played works by Schumann and Grieg, as well as his own compositions. In 1923 she finished visiting the Evanston Township High School and studied English until 1925 at Northwestern University and then one year at the Lyceum of Arts Conservatory in Chicago. After the Conservatory, she held various odd jobs.

In March 1928 married Mary Jane Ward and the statistician Edward Quayle, who wrote plays in his spare time. This work inspired the wife, even to start writing and publishing short stories. 1937 took over Mary Jane Ward work as a literary critic; In the same year appeared her novella The Tree Has Roots. In 1938 she published the novel The Wax Apple. Both publications were unsuccessful.

1939, the couple moved to Greenwich Village - plagued by financial worries. They caused at Mary Jane Ward acute stress reaction, which led after admission to a stay of eight months in the Rockland State Hospital in Orangeburg (New York). The - probably faulty - diagnosis was schizophrenia, its treatment should be achieved by hot baths and electric shock. Based on their experiences in psychiatry, which included psychoanalysis, Ward wrote the semi- autobiographical novel, The Snake Pit, which appeared in 1946. The publication sparked strong reactions of the literary critic and psychiatry experts. The director Anatole Litvak turned the 1948 film, which ran under the title The snake pit in Germany.

Following this success, the couple settled on a farm near Chicago. In the period leading up to her death in 1981, three more visits were required in a psychiatric ward.

Reception

Ward's novel The Snake Pit brought in the first month after the release in 1946 for the publisher Random House sales of more than one hundred thousand dollars. This publication and the film The Snake Pit in 1948 led to reforms in psychiatric institutions.