Shout out to my friend Maggie who gave me this great book for my birthday this year! If Kate Moore sounds familiar its because she wrote the incredibly popular "Radium Girls" and Maggie and I actually went to an author event with her a few years ago where she talked about it and she was lovely and nice and it was such a fun night.
So this is the true story of a woman named Elizabeth Packard. It's 1860 and Elizabeth is married to her husband and they have a small family. Her husband is a preacher who is slowly growing more and more resentful of his vibrant wife. She speaks up in Bible class, has opinions of her own, asks questions, and is overall more liked then her husband. He tries to silence her several times but eventually, with the help of some conspirators (several of whom Elizabeth counted as friends) she is imprisoned in the Illinois State Hospital in Jacksonville, Illinois. It was ASTONISHINGLY easy to get your wife thrown into an institution during this time. (Actually it was much harder to get a single person institutionalized because women were considered...property of their husbands).
Here's a quote from Elizabeth about some of her fellow inmates:
"It was a matter of great surprise to me to find so many, who, like themselves, had never shown any sign of insanity...the asylum was a storage unit for unsatisfactory wives, put here to get rid of them".
At first Elizabeth is put on a ward with a lot of freedom and other women in similiar situations to her - not actually insane, just troublesome for their families for whatever reason. But when she beings to butt heads with the head doctor, as a punishment, she is sent to a dark, unsanitary ward filled with women who do actually need mental help, many of whom who are violent. Elizabeth made it her mission to help these women (like, helping to bathe them once every 3 weeks instead of....never). This is the start of a lifetime commitment to helping women imprisoned unjustly like her, and other minority groups.
This was a thick book, but read really quickly. Was it a bit of disheartening read at time? Oh my gosh yes. But ultimately uplifting as we get to see Elizabeth work towards the betterment of others!
