1860. Manteno, Illinois. The more Theophilus Packard's wife's religious views diverged from his own, the more inconvenient she became to this small-town pastor. Finally, he put his plan in action and enlisted the aid of strong men who bundled her into a wagon headed for the train station. Once aboard the train, Elizabeth Packard found herself headed for Jacksonville, the home of the Illinois State Hospital. Once inside the stately building, Elizabeth's husband had her committed and put into the care of Dr. Andrew McFarland, a man highly regarded for his knowledge and treatment of the insane.
Once out of the public areas and into a ward with the other patients, Elizabeth found herself in "a storage unit for unsatisfactory wives." Many of the other patients were women just as sane as she who had also been put there by their husbands, and they found themselves with no rights and no way of ever getting out.
But Theophilus Packard and Dr. Andrew McFarland soon learned that they had grossly underestimated this tiny woman. Once she realized that she had truly lost everything, she knew that she had nothing to lose, and she began to fight. And fight. And fight. For her freedom and that of the other sane women unjustly imprisoned in asylums everywhere.
~
When I read this emotionally charged book and learned that at the time of the Civil War Jacksonville, Illinois had been known as "the Athens of the West," I almost choked. I grew up not far from Jacksonville, and I knew it as the home of "the state nuthouse." But that's just geography. When I learned of this book, I knew that it would resonate with me and not just because I'm a woman and well aware of how my gender has been treated by the opposite sex. My mother had what was then termed a nervous breakdown when I was an infant, and she underwent electroshock therapy to snap her out of it. Living with Mom made me very aware of the stigma that is applied to anyone with the slightest hint of mental illness about them. As a teenager, I did volunteer work at a mental health center that had a program bringing patients from the hospital in Jacksonville to the center to be rehabilitated.
So... I'm familiar with the area, and I'm a woman with more than a passing acquaintance with mental illness. I'm also a reader aware of the abominable way mentally ill people have been treated down through the centuries. No wonder I expected to be horrified and angered by reading The Woman They Could Not Silence. Was I? You bet!
But much more than that, I was uplifted by Elizabeth Packard. What a marvelous human being! It was an emotional experience to watch this woman's character be forged through her time in the mental hospital. At first, she was a woman of her time. Her husband had falsely accused and forsaken her, so she looked to another man to rescue her. The man she turned to was Dr. Andrew McFarland. However, her thinking was flawed. McFarland was even more dangerous than her husband. Time after time, I found Elizabeth's naïveté heartbreaking, but once she realized that she could count on no one but herself to obtain her freedom, there was no stopping her. Wow!
Elizabeth Packard almost single-handedly changed the laws in many states pertaining to married women's rights to their own wages and property as well as to the commitment and treatment of the mentally ill. Think crowdfunding is a 21st-century resource? Think again. Elizabeth Packard was an expert practitioner. This woman had flaws, but she also had so much empathy, compassion, intelligence, determination... She should have been a shining example to us all for over one hundred fifty years, but instead, she was consigned to obscurity, a centenary in the Jacksonville papers labeling her "a minor league nut" who "couldn't keep her mouth shut."
As Kate Moore says in her Author's Note: "So in the end, this a book about power. Who wields it. Who owns it. And the methods they use. And above all, it's about fighting back." I, for one, am grateful that Moore brought Elizabeth Packard back into the light. More than ever, this world needs to follow the examples set by such beacons of humanity.
The Woman They Could Not Silence: One Woman, Her Incredible Fight for Freedom, and the Men Who Tried to Make Her Disappear
by Kate Moore
eISBN: 9781492696735
Sourcebooks © 2021
eBook, 589 pages
Non-Fiction, Standalone
Rating: A+
Source: Purchased from Amazon.
