BG’s copy
It’s March, Woman’s History Month, and the subject of women coming forward and speaking up, leading to being discredited, captured the author, Kate Moore, in particular, challenging a woman’s mental fitness, as a means to ruin their word and reputation. In light of the Me Too Movement, she wondered if any women had to battle the question of sanity in the past when speaking up – this title, is a product of her research.
The Woman They Could Not Silence, by Kate Moore, was an amazingly interesting read – I couldn’t put it down. It’s about a civil-war-era woman named Elizabeth Packard, who was committed to an insane asylum, simply because she was outspoken, intelligent, and her husband could not “manage” her. The author tells the reader, that this is not a book about mental illness, but how it can be used as a weapon – calling a person insane and having them committed to get them out of the way. It’s about power – the owners of it and what they do with it. It’s also about fighting back.