https://padlet.com/jcampbell2022/y9z913id9htbhm92 Exploring the History of Women Forced to Confinement en-us 2022-05-11 12:48:36 UTC 2026-01-25 03:13:50 UTC hello@padlet.com https://padlet.net/icons/png/1f6f8.png jcampbell2022 https://padlet.com/jcampbell2022/y9z913id9htbhm92/wish/2185728848 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.]]> 2022-05-16 13:39:11 UTC https://padlet.com/jcampbell2022/y9z913id9htbhm92/wish/2185728848 jcampbell2022 https://padlet.com/jcampbell2022/y9z913id9htbhm92/wish/2185731100 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.]]> 2022-05-16 13:40:25 UTC https://padlet.com/jcampbell2022/y9z913id9htbhm92/wish/2185731100 jcampbell2022 https://padlet.com/jcampbell2022/y9z913id9htbhm92/wish/2185734262 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. ]]> 2022-05-16 13:41:39 UTC https://padlet.com/jcampbell2022/y9z913id9htbhm92/wish/2185734262 jcampbell2022 https://padlet.com/jcampbell2022/y9z913id9htbhm92/wish/2185742391 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.]]> 2022-05-16 13:46:12 UTC https://padlet.com/jcampbell2022/y9z913id9htbhm92/wish/2185742391 jcampbell2022 https://padlet.com/jcampbell2022/y9z913id9htbhm92/wish/2188405795 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.

]]> 2022-05-17 22:44:43 UTC https://padlet.com/jcampbell2022/y9z913id9htbhm92/wish/2188405795 jcampbell2022 https://padlet.com/jcampbell2022/y9z913id9htbhm92/wish/2191988589 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.]]> 2022-05-19 21:06:23 UTC https://padlet.com/jcampbell2022/y9z913id9htbhm92/wish/2191988589 jcampbell2022 https://padlet.com/jcampbell2022/y9z913id9htbhm92/wish/2191988720 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.]]> 2022-05-19 21:06:32 UTC https://padlet.com/jcampbell2022/y9z913id9htbhm92/wish/2191988720