The Woman They Could Not Silence

January 1, 2021

In 1860, wife and mother Elizabeth Packard was committed to an insane asylum by her husband, who couldn't tolerate her insistence on speaking her mind. At the Illinois State Hospital, Elizabeth encountered women like her committed strictly as a means of control, and after winning her freedom she became an advocate for such women and for women's rights generally. From the author of the New York Times best-selling Radium Girls.

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April 1, 2021
While the Civil War erupted, housewife and mother of six, Elizabeth Packard, was detained at the Jacksonville Insane Asylum in Illinois. For three long years, she was separated from her children and subjected to heinous conditions. Her crime? Daring to have an opinion in opposition to her husband's narrow-minded beliefs. She was not alone. At that time, women were labeled hysterical and locked up for something as simple as the unfeminine habit of "novel reading." Married women were particularly vulnerable as their legal rights were nonexistent. Packard did not go down quietly. She appealed her case to anyone who would listen and covertly documented the appalling abuse she witnessed while institutionalized. The more her oppressors attempted to silence her, the harder she fought. She became a champion for women's rights and mental health reform. Moore's (The Radium Girls, 2017) expert research and impassioned storytelling combine to create an absolutely unputdownable account of Packard's harrowing experience. Readers will be shocked, horrified, and inspired. A veritable tour de force about how far women's rights have come and how far we still have to go.

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Starred review from May 24, 2021
Bestseller Moore (The Radium Girls) delivers a riveting chronicle of Elizabeth Packard’s (1816–1897) forced commitment to an Illinois insane asylum and advocacy for women’s equality and the rights of psychiatric patients. Skillfully drawing on Packard’s voluminous writings, Moore describes her subject’s “cheerless” marriage to Presbyterian preacher Theophilus Packard, and the couple’s growing estrangement as Elizabeth, inspired by the nascent women’s rights movement, began to publicly question his theological beliefs. Angered by his wife’s “impassioned eloquence,” Theophilus took advantage of an Illinois law that allowed husbands to have their wives committed without trial. Moore recounts Elizabeth’s shock at discovering that the Jacksonville Insane Asylum “was a storage unit for unsatisfactory wives,” details abuses by hospital attendants and superintendent Andrew McFarland, and delves into the legal and social framework that rendered married women “utterly defenseless.” After thwarting Theophilus’s plans to have her permanently committed, Elizabeth led successful campaigns to overturn coverture laws that denied rights to married women and reform asylums across the country. Moore packs in plenty of drama without sacrificing historical fidelity, and paints Elizabeth’s fierce intelligence and unflagging ambition with vibrant brushstrokes. Readers will be thrilled to discover this undersung early feminist hero. Agent: Simon Lipskar, Writers House.

May 15, 2021
The author of The Radium Girls returns with an inspiring story of the tireless 19th-century woman who fought against gender-based injustices. The titular woman is Elizabeth Packard (1816-1897), an Illinois mother of six who took on the legal system after she was involuntarily committed to the Jacksonville Insane Asylum in 1860 by her husband's request. Elizabeth and her husband, Theophilus, 15 years her senior, initially appeared to have a typical marriage for a mid-19th-century American couple. That all changed as Theophilus, a minister, increasingly saw his wife's outspoken support of women's rights as a threat. As Moore demonstrates, while he had "long been in the habit of trying to control" his wife, Theophilus became more concerned when she began to offer more liberal opinions on theology, abolition, and the role of women to parishioners at his church. That led to an ominous threat from husband to wife: "I shall put you into the asylum!" Moore details Elizabeth's three-year involuntary confinement and the sexist system that allowed husbands to have their wives declared insane without a diagnosis or legal hearing. Despite inhumane conditions, Elizabeth was determined to be declared sane and to become an advocate for women and the mentally ill through her own writings and advocacy. The trial in which she fought to be declared mentally fit was a media sensation, and though she prevailed, "she was now homeless. Penniless. Childless. All she had to her name were the clothes she stood up in and a manuscript she'd been repeatedly told would never see the light of day." Drawing on sources like letters, memoirs, and trial transcripts, Moore's well-researched book paints a clear picture of the obstacles Elizabeth faced both during and after her confinement and the cruel resoluteness of both her husband and doctor, who tried to control her at all costs. A vivid look at the life and times of a little-known pioneer of women's rights.

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