The Woman They Could Not Silence: One Woman, Her Incredible Fight for Freedom, and the Men Who Tried to Make Her Disappear

Elizabeth was given several warnings in the months leading up to the threat she issued to McFarland, insisting he publish her book. The women in multiple wards and several employees told her that she needed to be careful about how far she extended herself and that she could put herself in a dangerous position if she continued to pursue her cause. As a Christian woman who remained abolitionist throughout her life and expanded her views to include anyone deprived of their liberty, Elizabeth saw this as a necessary calling she had to follow, reflecting how she used Tenacity, Perseverance, and Integrity as Weapons Against Injustice. If she didn’t, she was not acting as a Christian but also shirking an opportunity presented to her by God. Through her circumstances she could do something that was godly, which could potentially result in the equal treatment she believed all God’s children deserved and which could ease their suffering, a primary component of what her teachings instructed her was one of the acts of service she owed her fellow human beings. She was courageous for acting so boldly, and her courage came from her belief that in doing God’s work, God would be with her and would provide her the wisdom to see her mission through.

While she was aware that, according to her religion, God frequently tested his followers, and with insider knowledge of McFarland’s character, it seems almost uncharacteristic that she was so completely unaware of the increasing encroachments on her privileges and the frequent retaliations she suffered at McFarland’s whims. Each time she is surprised, her privilege and naivete are revealed. So as much as she shows courage, she also has a protective factor in the idea that she thinks nothing terrible will be done to her. To her credit, when these things happen and she is put in the situation in Eighth Ward, a comparatively odious environment, Elizabeth realizes that she had been correct to write her defense of herself and her indictment of the way McFarland managed the hospital. She had started to understand that he was fully to blame for all the injustices suffered there. It is true that the temperament, training, integrity, and benevolence were overwhelmingly lacking in most of the attendants at the “asylum,” but as the ultimate authority and figurehead of the “asylum,” McFarland is entirely to blame for allowing the culture of the institution to perpetuate as it was. He regularly dismissed all complaints as the raving of people with mental illnesses, giving no credence to their pleas for help and protection from the cruelest of employees, even when significant evidence of physical abuse was present.

Elizabeth made the most of her time in Jacksonville, either writing or speaking at all times, even in secret. When she took on this role of washing of patients and direct care and provision of comfort, she was reenacting her domestic role as a mother and nurturer for which she was so highly praised by so many. Everything she did was in keeping with the ideal Victorian woman; the only caveat was that she was forceful in her insistence that she would not abide a man who did not live up to those ideals the way she did. As he had intended with all of his other female patients, McFarland had successfully placed himself in the role of both husband and father for the women in his care. Elizabeth was described by most, Moore included, as a very intelligent woman, but her willingness to forgive and assume the best about McFarland despite all of the mounting evidence that he was cruel and at best indifferent to and at worst a proponent of patient cruelty is cited by Moore as one of the most perplexing aspects of her character. Moore attributes Elizabeth’s valuing and devaluing of McFarland and her vacillation between admiring and abhorring him to the significant emotional distress and traumatic pressure she endured while in the hospital. Moore cites the conceptualization of Elizabeth’s approach as a “survival mechanism.” The naivete that she occasionally manifests concerning McFarland is similar to the naiveté that many Victorian men seem to have had about other men; men who were virtuous at that time were evaluating the character of other men based on the shared expectations placed on all of them, but many were also giving other men the benefit of the doubt, hence the reluctance to interfere with another man’s administration of his household.

The conversation that Moore relates between McFarland and his fellow superintendents of American psychiatric hospitals proves that not all state hospital superintendents were as power-drunk and lacking in integrity as he was. Many superintendents, aware of their high status in their communities and on a national scale, were cognizant that they should hold themselves to a higher standard, and many did not hesitate to embrace opportunities to hold their fellow superintendents to account as well. Though AMSAII was an organization and not a governing body with the privilege to revoke a member’s position at their own hospital, interpersonally, many superintendents were considered upstanding, compassionate, devoted, and benevolent in their administration tactics. In unintentionally revealing himself to be somewhat less than his peers expected him to be, McFarland surreptitiously admitted that he didn’t truly want Elizabeth discharged because he thought she was cured; he wanted her gone because she was trouble, and this caused his colleagues to question his ethics. In revealing his desire to be rid of Elizabeth, McFarland hints at the abuse of power affecting his oversight of Jacksonville.