SOURCE: "Elizabeth Packard and Versions of Sanity," in The Writing on the Wall: Women's Autobiography and the Asylum, University of Illinois Press, 1994, pp. 25-47.

In the following essay, Wood examines Elizabeth Packard's account of her experience in an insane asylum. In particular, Wood studies the parallels between Packard's story and both slave narratives and sentimental novels.

In 1860, Theophilus Packard forced his wife Elizabeth from their home and committed her to the state insane asylum at Jacksonville, Illinois. According to her own account, she had long been battling with Theophilus, a Presbyterian minister, over the validity of what she considered the outdated and repressive concept of innate depravity. Elizabeth held her own Bible discussion groups, where she encouraged church members, mostly women, to question the traditional Calvinist doctrine and develop personal interpretations of biblical passages. Her husband and certain church elders considered her preaching subversive and indicative of an...