Book Short
The Woman They Could Not Silence
Review by Stephanie Miller
One summer morning in 1860, Elizabeth Packard, a housewife and mother of six, is committed to an insane asylum by her husband of twenty-one years.
Sadly, Elizabeth is not the only sane woman in the institution. No one is willing to fight for their freedom and because of their gender and the stigma of their presumed madness, they are unable to fight for themselves. However, it is Elizabeth – intelligent, charismatic, visionary, and unshakeable – who nearly single handedly gets married women a legal claim to their own lives.
Mr. Packard was well within his legal rights. In fact, married women had absolutely no legal standing. They could not open a bank account, earn money (or inherit it), file a charge, or appeal any judgements. They were 100% the property of their husbands. When she gets to the ward, Elizabeth meets many other women who tell the same story she does. They are committed to the asylum simply because their husbands wanted them out of the way. Conveniently labeled, “crazy,” their voices are silenced, their persons become invisible.
Kate Moore’s Storytelling
I know I will see many raised eyebrows for recommending a 600-page, non-fiction hardback book during beach reading season. Stick with me, because best-selling author Kate Moore’s “The Woman They Could Not Silence” is fast paced and unputdownable.
Elizabeth realizes a few months into her incarceration that the merit of losing everything is that you no longer have anything to lose. This woman never gives up.
She initially trusts the medical director of the asylum. His approach is to get the women to admire and even love him, so they will recognize a male authority figure and thus be more accommodating to their husbands and fathers. As she starts to document the treatment she receives and witnesses in the asylum, Elizabeth slowly awakens to the reality of the battle she is in with this man. She is truly alone in this – he intercepts, reads, and holds all her inbound and outbound mail.
Finally, she forces his hand and he and her husband must give her a trial. Of course, it’s up to her to prove she’s sane.
Spoilers Ahead
The account of the trial is fascinating and the stuff of drama. Spoiler alert: she wins. But she does not stop.
Elizabeth becomes an activist for married women’s rights. She is abandoned by her husband (beaten in court, he takes all they own and runs away with the children), and she is not legally allowed to earn money. So, she does the 19th Century version of a Kickstarter campaign. She goes door to door selling subscriptions to a pamphlet she hasn’t written yet, which she promises will expose the fraudster psychiatrists and advocate for every woman incarcerated in insane asylums to get a trial.
Spoiler alert: she wins. But she still does not stop. She takes on cause after cause and earns such respect and authority that she is invited to sit with the all-male state legislators and write new laws protecting the rights of married women as citizens.
I was amazed to learn of this mostly forgotten heroine of human rights. Her resilience, kindness, and industry, and her unwavering dedication to her children and fellow asylum prisoners, are inspiring proof that justice can be found when the force of a determined woman is behind it.
Micro Shorts
‘The Daughter of Time,’ by Josephine Tey
Scotland Yard detective Alan Grant is trapped by injury in bed, bored and cranky. He turns his mind to a long unsolved puzzle: whether King Richard III of English murdered his nephews, the Princes in the Tower. Long condemned as a monster, Grant starts to suspect King Richard was innocent of the crime. But can 40 million schoolbooks have it wrong? Selected as the greatest mystery novel of all time in 1990 by the Crime Writer’s Association, this is one of Tey’s best. It’s out of print, but available for the persistent in great used bookstores. I found mine at Green Hand on Congress. Or search ThriftBooks.com.
‘Love and Saffron,’ by Kim Fay
Oh, this is a beautiful story and lovely read. It’s perfect for the beach or a rainy afternoon (anyone experience them this summer?!). But bring snacks, because the letters that make up the novel – which start out as fan mail and end up as friendship – cover a lot of good food. This is a story of deep connection across one thousand miles, a generation, and widely different experience. But in the end, it’s these two pen pals that end up seeing each other truly, and clearly, and lovingly in a correspondence that changes both their lives.
‘Shrines of Gaiety,’ by Kate Atkinson
In 1926, with the country still recovering from the war, London’s nightclub scene exploded into being. Nobles rub shoulders with gangsters, film stars, writers, and dignitaries; and girls sell dances for a shilling. The queen of this glittering world is Nellie Coker, ruthless, ambitious, and determined to advance her six children. Atkinson weaves an engaging plot with enigmatic characters, pitting the dazzle of the dance floor with an underbelly of darkness where it is easy to become lost.
