The Woman They Could Not Silence

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

1860: As the clash between the states rolls slowly to a boil, Elizabeth Packard, housewife and mother of six, is facing her own battle. The enemy sits across the table and sleeps in the next room. Her husband of twenty-one years is plotting against her because he feels increasingly threatened - by Elizabeth's intellect, independence, and unwillingness to stifle her own thoughts. So Theophilus makes a plan to put his wife back in her place. One summer morning, he has her committed to an insane asylum.

The horrific conditions inside the Illinois State Hospital in Jacksonville, Illinois, are overseen by Dr. Andrew McFarland, a man who will prove to be even more dangerous to Elizabeth than her traitorous husband. But most disturbing is that Elizabeth is not the only sane woman confined to the institution. There are many rational women on her ward who tell the same story: they've been committed not because they need medical treatment, but to keep them in line - conveniently labeled "crazy" so their voices are ignored.

No one is willing to fight for their freedom and, disenfranchised both by gender and the stigma of their supposed madness, they cannot possibly fight for themselves. But Elizabeth is about to discover that the merit of losing everything is that you then have nothing to lose...

Kate Moore writes about women whom history has forgotten, women who have suffered and whose lives have changed the course of history and whom, despite that, we know very little about. Her first book, The Radium Girls was distinguished more by the subject matter than by the writing. Moore's style is a bit flat here too - she cites constantly from the source material but in so doing, I find her use of quotations more distracting than anything else. I would much prefer her to present the facts and cite by footnotes than constantly insert quotations like a Zagat's Guide. There's almost too much focus on Elizabeth and her own thoughts. It's not a short book, although it does go pretty quickly, but in the last few sections, Elizabeth is released and we broaden our scope to her lobbying efforts. It's certainly less interesting, so I don't fault Moore for spending relatively little time on it, but it would be nice to get more of a sense of the effect these laws had on the systems and any long term impacts her anti-asylum groups had.

 

That being said, once again Moore has chosen an excellent subject. Elizabeth Packard is wholly compelling personage and, as seen in her own writings, eloquent and persuasive.  We see very little of her life prior to her institutionalization and perhaps a bit more background could have helped to explain why she felt so called upon to resist, especially given how common it seems it would have been to keep a low and biddable profile in order to return home. Moore's author's note indicates that she wrote, then cut, an entire beginning section that dealt with Elizabeth's church discussion groups, which seem to kick off the schism between Elizabeth and her husband.  Were there other moments of resistance before this that paved the road?

 

It's inspiring, and intentionally so. Moore writes that she deliberately chose a story with "a happy ending" for which I commend her. Nothing like reading about women needlessly thrown into asylums without proof to make you crave a happy ending.  Elizabeth's courage is manifest, but it's still a tragedy that she endured so many years of separation from her children. I did find it amusing that once her husband Theophilius accepts that she cannot be squashed, they seem to be able to live if not comfortably, at least compatibly.  It just goes to show the damage that a weak man, with all the tools of an unjust system, can do in the pursuit of his own protection. If only he had been able to admit that Elizabeth was always the stronger of the two, perhaps all of this could have been avoided. Maybe it was Theophilius all along who held the insane views since his belief in his own superiority was clearly contrary to the truth.

But Moore's central thesis, which she hammers hard at the beginning and slightly again at the end, that "insanity" is merely a convenient way to dismiss and thwart those who would challenge those in power, is a convincing one. It begs each of us to consider all the ways in which our own prejudices and judgments are informed not by truth but by habit. I find myself uncomfortably close to the subject matter right now, as I find myself advising a family that - for her own protection - a woman needs a guardianship. But Elizabeth's example should be a guide here as well - regardless of the circumstances, to treat everyone with kindness and dignity even if they cannot manage themselves.  

 

And if ever we needed a reminder to keep fighting, the book itself is proof that, as Martin Luther King, Jr. said, "The Arc of the Moral Universe is long, but it bends towards Justice." 160 years later, it is Elizabeth Packard's name, not the good doctor MacFarland, whose name adorns the Illinois state asylum in Springfield. 

 

32: A Book About An Overlooked Woman In History