num_pages: 560
description: 1860: As the clash between the states rolls slowly to a boil Elizabeth Packard housewife and mother of six is facing her own battle. The enemy sits across the table and sleeps in the next room. Her husband of twenty-one years is plotting against her because he feels increasingly threatened - by Elizabeth's intellect independence and unwillingness to stifle her own thoughts. So Theophilus makes a plan to put his wife back in her place. One summer morning he has her committed to an insane asylum.The horrific conditions inside the Illinois State Hospital in Jacksonville Illinois are overseen by Dr. Andrew McFarland a man who will prove to be even more dangerous to Elizabeth than her traitorous husband. But most disturbing is that Elizabeth is not the only sane woman confined to the institution. There are many rational women on her ward who tell the same story: they've been committed not because they need medical treatment but to keep them in line - conveniently labeled crazy so their voices are ignored.No one is willing to fight for their freedom and disenfranchised both by gender and the stigma of their supposed madness they cannot possibly fight for themselves. But Elizabeth is about to discover that the merit of losing everything is that you then have nothing to lose...
language: English
title: The Woman They Could Not Silence: One Woman, Her Incredible Fight for Freedom, and the Men Who Tried to Make Her Disappear
publisher: Sourcebooks