Every now and then, I have the time to pick up a book, separate from the book club, and give it a read/listen – this time around I picked Kate Moore’s The Woman They Could Not Silence: One Woman, Her Incredible Fight For Freedom, and the Men Who Tried to Make Her Disappear. I’ll preface this by saying that although I was aware of the lack of legislation, laws, and overall lack of voice women had in the United States in the late 1800s (even worse than modern day), I knew very little in regards to insane asylums.
The story covers the journey of Elizabeth Packard, just being short of being called a witch for her obviously high intellect, and how she decided after much struggle that women (in many cases, married women in particular) did not have enough rights to protect themselves from their husbands and the justice system when those things failed – so she did something about it. Learning about Elizabeth Packard’s experience as a married woman was very infuriating; however, as she puts it her self, if it wasn’t for these terrible experiences, she may not have been able to do everything she ended up accomplishing for the benefit of women all over the country.
This is a great book covering Elizabeth’s unjust incarceration into Jacksonville Asylum in Illinois and her perseverance, however long it took, to not only free herself, but all women in the United States from the shackles of misogynistic laws and a government that didn’t even consider women as humans deserving of rights.
I definitely encourage everyone to read this and broadened their knowledge of US history a little more.