20-50
A01=Linda V. Carlisle
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American history
asylum
Author_Linda V. Carlisle
automatic-update
betrayal
biography
Calvinism
Category1=Non-Fiction
Category=BGH
Category=DNBH
Category=JBSF1
Category=JFSJ1
Category=JPVC
Category=JPVH1
Chicago
child custody
civil rights
commitment
COP=United States
courage
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Elizabeth Packard
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eq_biography-true-stories
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_society-politics
equality
feminism
fight
finances
history
Illinois
insane asylum
insanity
Language_English
law
legal
marriage
mental health
mentally ill
PA=Available
Price_€20 to €50
property
protection
PS=Active
psychiatry
reform
religion
rights
softlaunch
struggle
US history
Women's rights
women's studies
Women’s rights
writer
Product details
- ISBN 9780252035722
- Weight: 594g
- Dimensions: 156 x 235mm
- Publication Date: 05 Nov 2010
- Publisher: University of Illinois Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Hardback
- Language: English
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Elizabeth Packard's story is one of courage and accomplishment in the face of injustice and heartbreak. In 1860, her husband, a strong-willed Calvinist minister, committed her to an Illinois insane asylum in an effort to protect their six children and his church from what he considered her heretical religious ideas. Upon her release three years later (as her husband sought to return her to an asylum), Packard obtained a jury trial and was declared sane. Before the trial ended, however, her husband sold their home and left for Massachusetts with their young children and her personal property. His actions were perfectly legal under Illinois and Massachusetts law; Packard had no legal recourse by which to recover her children and property. This experience in the legal system, along with her experience as an asylum patient, launched Packard into a career as an advocate for the civil rights of married women and the mentally ill. She wrote numerous books and lobbied legislatures literally from coast to coast advocating more stringent commitment laws, protections for the rights of asylum patients, and laws to give married women equal rights in matters of child custody, property, and earnings. Despite strong opposition from the psychiatric community, Packard's laws were passed in state after state, with lasting impact on commitment and care of the mentally ill in the United States. Packard's life demonstrates how dissonant streams of American social and intellectual history led to conflict between the freethinking Packard, her Calvinist husband, her asylum doctor, and America's fledgling psychiatric profession. It is this conflict--along with her personal battle to transcend the stigma of insanity and regain custody of her children--that makes Elizabeth Packard's story both forceful and compelling.
Linda V. Carlisle is an associate professor in Library & Information Services at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville. She holds a Ph.D. in history from Southern Illinois University Carbondale.
