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My nonfiction piece takes place in the mid 1800s. Women's rights during this time were quite limited. Women were denied the right to vote and faced gender-specific work rights that differed from men's. At the time, women who were married were not allowed to carry out their own legal trials, that work had to be done by their husbands. Between 1860 and 1913, courts analyzed property acts as to not permit spouses to sue one another for speculative crimes.

This piece first takes place in Massachusetts where Elizabeth packard and her children lived, but in 1857 they moved to illinois where the bulk of her story takes place.

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1816 - 1897
Because of her parents' affluence, Elizabeth Packard was able to obtain a quality education at the Amherst Female Seminary, where she studied the new classics, allowing her to become a well-educated and middle-class woman.

She was diagnosed with "brain fever" in 1835, which simply translates to infrequent headaches and general weariness. This diagnosis required her to visit her local hospital for six weeks and began her suspicion of the quality and education of medical professionals.

Elizabeth married Theophilus Packard, a Calvinist minister, in 1839 at the insistence of her parents. They had six children in Massachusetts, then moved to Illinois in 1857.

Elizabeth Packard openly questioned her husband's beliefs and began expressing alternate opinions. The couple also discovered that they disagreed on the way to bring up children, family finances, and the matter of slavery, with Elizabeth siding with the abolitionist movement.

As Illinois constructed its first mental hospital, the state legislature passed a regulation that made having a public hearing mandatory before a person could be admitted against their will. Though there was an exception; a husband could send his wife to a mental hospital without her consent or a public hearing.

Her husband decided to take advantage of this loophole, and ruled his wife "mildly insane" when he spoke to the county sheriff who took her away shortly after. She spent roughly three years at an insane asylum in Illinois. She was discharged only after being deemed incurable and was placed back into the care of Mr. Packard. The way in which he handled her return is unclear, but all census points to him locking her up in their house. She was able to communicate with a friend who got her in contact with a judge for a special hearing. At the hearing, the jury toon seven minutes to figure she was sane.

After the trial, Elizabeth Packard returned home to discover that her husband had sold her furniture and personal belongings, and additionally he had rented the house to another family and moved away with their kids. She petitioned the Higher Courts of Illinois and Massachusetts, where her husband had moved their children, but was unable to change anything because married women in these states had no legal rights to their property or children at the time.

She moved on to write many books and traveled across the country, became a well known advocate for women's rights, and went on to found the Anti-Insane Asylum Society.

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The Prisoners' Hidden Life, or, Insane Asylums Unveiled

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The Prisoners' Hidden Life, or, Insane Asylums Unveiled

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Elizabeth Packard's experience is depicted in this autobiography.
She was pronounced insane by her husband, a Presbyterian pastor, because she voiced religious views that didn't align with his own during one of his sermons. Mr. packard considered her "outburst" hazardous to the spiritual interests of his children and the community.

In order to be officially counted as insane, Mrs. Packard had to go through an examination in which two doctors declared she was insane by only feeling her pulse.

As she was being carried to her confinement, Mrs. Packard requested many times for a trial before she was subjected to the conditions and treatment of her local asylum. She learned that married women and infants were not allotted the right to trial before being committed to a mental health institution. In other words, over half the population in the United states in the 1860's could be placed in an insane asylum without proof of any mental health deterrents. Elizabeth Packard quotes in her novel her realization of this fact, “Not  knowing  that  Illinois  had  legalized  this  mode  of  kidnapping the  married  women  of  their  State,  I  had  no  idea that  my  personal  liberty  depended  entirely  upon  the  will  or wishes  of  my  husband”.

She publicized the story of her hospitalization at the hands of her husband in order to prevent the abuse and neglect of others vulnerable before the law.

Near the end of her bibliography, Mrs. Packard was able to renew her name as a sane, productive member of her community; though it's important to acknowledge her privileged status as not only a wife to a well known pastor in her town, but as a popular, educated white woman. Mrs. Packard attended the Amherst Female Seminary, which has been noted as one of the most rigorous academic institutions available to a young woman at that time.

All of these factors contributed to her public redemption. This is significant because Mrs. Packard's case is an extremely unique one in which a woman in the 1800s essentially single-handedly freed herself from a corrupt psychiatric ward. This was not the case for those sentenced in the same fashion as she was.

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Théodore Géricault's 1822 oil on canvas painting Insane Woman is part of a sequence of works he made on the mentally ill. In contrast to prior romanticized commissioned portraiture, these portraits present the physical facts with honesty.

Mental abnormality of consciousness piqued the curiosity of artists who were opposed to Enlightenment rationalism. Géricault, like many of his contemporaries, investigated the influence of mental states on the human face and shared the opinion, widespread at the time, that a face reflected character more precisely, especially in madness.

He conducted research on inmates in hospitals and prisons for the criminally insane.

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This Poem is Called Written in Northampton County Asylum, and was written by John Clare. It is about a persons abstract realization that they are present even though their friends and family may not acknowledge it. The speaker notes, "I am! yet what I am who cares, or knows?/My friends forsake me like a memory lost", this exemplifies the feeling of being misunderstood and unheard by those around you.

This poem was important to my research because I got a more conceptual view of how insanity is interpreted among different people. I enjoyed reading this and I don't think I would've gotten the chance to if not for this assignment.

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John Clare

I AM! yet what I am who cares, or knows?
My friends forsake me like a memory lost.
I am the self-consumer of my woes;
They rise and vanish, an oblivious host,
Shadows of life, whose very soul is lost.
And yet I am-I live-though I am toss'd

Into the nothingness of scorn and noise,
Into the living sea of waking dream,
Where there is neither sense of life, nor joys,
But the huge shipwreck of my own esteem
And all that 's dear. Even those I loved the best
Are strange-nay, they are stranger than the rest.

I long for scenes where man has never trod-
For scenes where woman never smiled or wept-
There to abide with my Creator, God,
And sleep as I in childhood sweetly slept,
Full of high thoughts, unborn. So let me lie,-
The grass below; above, the vaulted sky.

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I AM! yet what I am who cares, or knows? My friends forsake me like a memory lost. I am the self-consumer of my woes; They rise and vanish, an oblivious host, Shadows of life, whose very soul is lost.

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In this excerpt, D Russel explores the idea that the medical system as it stands, is designed without the interests of women in mind. Once a person has been labeled insane, it is very likely that they will be encouraged, if not forced, to undergo particular treatments which may have harmful results and/or side-effects.

This is important to my research because it opened up the idea that its very much possible that the medical health system itself has rooted prejudice against the women's physical, mental, and emotional health.

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Abstract

The system of psychiatric diagnosis which has recently been adopted by most western countries has features, which in various ways, work against the interests of women. This is important as the diagnostic scheme is not a theoretical work which will lay gathering dust on the bookshelves in medical libraries, it is a practical tool which forms the basis for the categorization of 'the insane'. Once the label has been assigned, it is then quite likely that the person labelled will be encouraged or even forced to have certain treatments. This may cause disquiet if the initial labelling is suspect. The purpose of this article is to reveal problems lurking beneath the surface of this moderately bland-looking system of psychiatric diagnosis and to show how the Scheme may help perpetuate the oppression of women.

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dependent personality disorder / diagnosis

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Psychiatric diagnosis and the oppression of women - PubMed

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The system of psychiatric diagnosis which has recently been adopted by most western countries has features, which in various ways, work against the interests of women. This is important as the diagnostic scheme is not a theoretical work which will lay gathering dust on the bookshelves in medical lib ...

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The Salem witch trials targeted colonial society's most vulnerable members, compelling women to pay the highest possible price for nonconformity. Similarly to women roughly 200 years ahead of them, those accused of witchcraft bear the brunt of the consequences of circumstances that are usually beyond their control. Women were expected to take up rigid roles in the household, produce children, and honor their husbands during this time period.

This source was a significant piece of my research because it proved that women have been outcasted for centuries only because they go against whatever their society deems as a women's place.

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In this painting, "Witch Hill/ The Salem Martyr" by Thomas Satterwhite Nobel in 1869, the town girl has been found guilty of witchcraft and is now walking to the gallows with the hangman and judges. (AP)

June 10 marks the anniversary of Bridget Bishop's hanging in 1692 for being a convicted witch, the first of 19 hangings in Salem, Mass. (Some accounts put the total at 20 people executed.) Thirteen of those executed for witchcraft and devil worship were women, many of whom made people uncomfortable by being "unruly." Married three times, Bishop was known for dressing exotically (by Puritan standards), drinking at taverns, fighting publicly with her husbands and generally disregarding Puritan societal standards. Bishop declared her innocence at her execution, to no avail.

Centuries ago, the Salem witch trials targeted those most vulnerable in colonial society, forcing women like Bishop to pay the highest possible price for nonconformity. While the legal system has changed since the days of Puritan rule, one thing remains the same: Vulnerable women pay the price for circumstances that are often beyond their control.

The witch trials happened during a period of economic unease, with some Salem families faring better than others. Salem society was permeated by interpersonal conflicts, many of which stemmed from competition over resources. Historian Edward Bever has noted that such conflict included "gossip, insults, scolding, threats, curses, ritual magic, legal action, and various forms of physical assault."

In this environment, women were consigned to rigid roles - mother, wife, caretaker. They had one job: producing obedient, religious children. Women who stepped outside these rigid boundaries were seen as working with Satan. (Why else would a woman reject her expected role?)

As descendants of Eve, the original woman to fall from grace, women were viewed by the Puritans as vulnerable to temptations like desire for material possessions or sexual satisfaction. Being homeless, poor or childless was cause for concern, and these were the women targeted by the trials.

Such was the situation for two of the initial Salem accused witches: Sarah Osborne, a poor elderly woman, and an Indian slave named Tituba. Osborne was a widow who, after her husband's death, took in an Irish immigrant as a farmhand, whom she would later marry. Then by claiming her deceased husband's estate for herself instead of her children, she challenged the standard practice at the time of inheritance and land tenure. In fact, it was the accusation of witchcraft that ended the legal battle with her children.

While Osborne protested that she was innocent, Tituba confessed that the devil had asked her to serve him, and that she had agreed. In fact, it was Tituba's claim that there were other witches like her that were working to destroy the Puritans that provided investigators enough evidence to justify launching a witch hunt. That Tituba was American Indian, a culture that Puritans feared, helped lend credibility to her confession.

Sarah Good was another accused woman who did not behave according to the standards expected of proper Puritan women. Like Bishop, Good was unruly. According to some sources, Good and her husband were poor and known to fight with other townspeople, making the couple unpopular in the community.

Good was, unsurprisingly, angry and resentful at being falsely accused of witchcraft and the subsequent loss of her family's land. Her neighbors found her ungrateful and lacking in humility when they offered assistance - for which she had to beg - in the way of food or shelter. Some of them spearheaded the campaign against her, claiming she pinched children, used witchcraft to sicken or kill their livestock and appeared at night naked and covered in blood. Good was found guilty, sent to prison and later executed. But it didn't stop there. Her very young daughter Dorothy (also known as Dorcas) Good also was subsequently found guilty of using witchcraft to exact revenge on her mother's accusers.

Being poor, vulnerable, unruly and sexually promiscuous turned these women into targets of the criminal justice system.

Today, the criminal justice system continues to punish the vulnerable women in society. Most women who end up under supervision of the U.S. correctional system, whether through probation, jail, prison or parole, come from a poor background.

They are vulnerable because, more so than their male counterparts, female criminals often have extensive histories of victimization and trauma. A girl facing physical or sexual abuse at the hands of parents, relatives or family friends may opt to run away, thereby becoming a criminal by leaving her home as a minor. Once a runaway, a young girl faces bleak potential outcomes. Many runaways often fall prey to pimps, leading to prostitution. These prostitutes, in turn, make life bearable by retreating into drug and alcohol abuse.

It's only a matter of time before they get caught up in the justice system, which is traditionally male-oriented and run by men. Correctional facilities are at times ill-equipped to receive female inmates, having traditionally been designed with male inmates in mind. While there are some correctional facilities specifically designed for women (for instance, ones that allow them to have and keep their babies while incarcerated), these are not the majority of facilities.

Like the Puritan witches before them, women offenders are also unruly because they behave in ways that "good" women do not.

As Pauline Brennan and Abby Vandenberg have noted, good women include wives and mothers who are "nurturing, emotional, and non-aggressive ... passive, cooperative, chaste." "Good" women and girls do not run away from home, even if fleeing an abusive home life. They do not turn to drugs to cope with a life on the street that may include prostitution. They do not steal to support a drug habit. Unruly, criminal women do these things. Like Bishop, Good and other accused Salem witches, modern female offenders often get removed from society via arrest, conviction and sentencing.

So what do we do about "witches" today?

Framing women as witches (or in modern thinking, as criminals, convicts or felons) and throwing them away (for instance, by placing them in prison) demonizes women and minimizes the circumstances that molded them. Of course, powerful women who have broken glass ceilings often also incur the title of witch as well, including Hillary Clinton, Rep. Nancy Pelosi, British Prime Minister Theresa May and Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard.

In a surprising turn, however, some women are trying to take ownership of the term "witch," transforming its meaning into something that extols women's empowerment and pushes back against patriarchy. In her response to director Woody Allen's statement that women coming forth with sexual harassment allegations had created a "witch hunt atmosphere," Lindy West wrote, "The witches are coming [for sexual harassers and rapists] ... we have our stories, and we're going to keep telling them."

For better or worse, it seems that the intertwining of women and witches, and the legacy of the Salem witch trials, are here to stay.

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Perspective | What the Salem witches can teach us about how we treat women today

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June 10 marks the anniversary of Bridget Bishop's hanging in 1692 for being a convicted witch, the first of 19 hangings in Salem, Mass. (Some accounts put the total at 20 people executed.) Thirteen of those executed for witchcraft and devil worship were women, many of whom made people uncomfortable by being "unruly."