Condition: BRAND NEW
ISBN: 9781922585080
Format: Trade paperback (UK)
Year: 2021
Publisher: Scribe Publications
Pages: 544


Description:
From the internationally bestselling author of The Radium Girls comes a dark but ultimately uplifting tale of a woman whose incredible journey still resonates today.

Elizabeth Packard was an ordinary Victorian housewife and mother of six. That was, until the first Woman's Rights Convention was held in 1848, inspiring Elizabeth and many other women to dream of greater freedoms. She began voicing her opinions on politics and religion - opinions that her husband did not share. Incensed and deeply threatened by her growing independence, he had her declared 'slightly insane' and committed to an asylum.

Inside the Illinois State Hospital, Elizabeth found many other perfectly lucid women who, like her, had been betrayed by their husbands and incarcerated for daring to have a voice. But just because you are sane, doesn't mean that you can escape a madhouse ...

Fighting the stigma of her gender and her supposed madness, Elizabeth embarked on a ceaseless quest for justice. It not only challenged the medical science of the day and saved untold others from suffering her fate, it ultimately led to a giant leap forward in human rights the world over.



'I have waited fifty years for this full-length biography of Elizabeth Parsons Ware Packard, and Kate Moore's The Woman They Could Not Silence is simply magnificent. It reads like a suspense novel- one is on the edge of her seat at all times; one cannot believe what happens next - and then after that. History comes alive as does the tragedy of women who were falsely judged "mad" and then incarcerated and tortured in 19th century American Insane Asy