‘The Gilded Age’: What Did Acute Melancholia Mean in the 1880s?

Gladys Russell (Taissa Farmiga) isn’t the only person who has to wrestle with a proposal in The Gilded Age Season 3 Episode 4 “Marriage is a Gamble.” One of the HBO hit’s sweetest b-plots hits an unfortunate snag this week. We’ve watched for years as the Russells’ chef Mr. Borden (Douglas Sills) has gotten closer with housekeeper Mrs. Bruce (Celia Keenan-Bolger). The two enjoy walks in Central Park together, watching fireworks, and just generally being wholesome. Now that Borden’s first wife has passed, it seems that a path is clear for Mrs. Bruce to become Mrs. Borden.

However, there’s a snag. Mrs. Bruce is not free to marry Mr. Borden. That’s because there is still a Mr. Bruce and he’s in an asylum suffering from “acute melancholia.”

So what was acute melancholia in the Gilded Age? What does it mean that Mrs. Bruce’s husband has it? And is there any realistic way for The Gilded Age‘s cutest downstairs couple to ever be together?

Towards the end of The Gilded Age Season 3 Episode 4 “Marriage is a Gamble,” Mrs. Bruce visits Chef Borden in the Russells’ kitchen to check in on Gladys’s wedding cake. He takes the opportunity to propose to his love, but she balks. Mrs. Bruce immediately explains that she has to turn down his offer because she is already married!

(Now, I know what you might be thinking. Of course she’s married. She goes by Mrs. Bruce. That would mean she’s married, duh! Except that it’s totally possible Chef Borden couldn’t know that she was married. Not only did she tell him she was single, but it was standard at the time for any housekeeper — married, widowed, or forever single — to use “Mrs.” as their title.)

Mrs. Bruce explains that her husband suffers from “acute melancholia” and has been in an asylum since 1877. Since The Gilded Age Season 3 takes place in 1884 that means he’s been stuck there for a good seven years. Mrs. Bruce also shares that she can’t divorce her husband because the only acceptable legal grounds for divorce in the state of New York at this time is adultery. Plus, she couldn’t afford it and doesn’t want to abandon him. Mr. Borden adorably thinks this is noble.

So what exactly is acute melancholia? Here’s everything you need to know about melancholia in The Gilded Age…

What Was Acute Melancholia in The Gilded Age?

Acute melancholia is what 19th century doctors would have called severe depression and several other mood disorders back in the Gilded Age. Given Mrs. Bruce’s sorrow for her husband, it’s likely that he not only suffers from what we would now call depression, but an additional disorder like bipolar disorder.

What’s maybe more striking about this plot development is the fact that Mr. Bruce is paying for his own treatment in an asylum in Larchmont, a modern day commuter town located north of New York City. NYC mental asylums of the time like Bloomingdale Insane Asylum and Blackwell’s Island were notorious for mistreating patients and misdiagnosing sane people. Journalists of the era like Julius Chambers and Nellie Bly famously went undercover in each and exposed their horrific conditions. This is probably why Mrs. Bruce has such sympathy for her husband, referring to him as the “victim” of the situation. (Although the fact that The Gilded Age very pointedly places him outside the city suggests that he might be at a nicer asylum? We can hope?)

Essentially, Mrs. Bruce is stuck in her marriage to a person with severe mental illness in a time that didn’t know how to handle that situation. There were not only no laws that would allow Mrs. Bruce to divorce her husband, but also medical professionals didn’t quite understand the nuances of mental health, placing all sorts of conditions under the umbrella of “acute melancholia.”