Committed to an insane asylum by her husband, a Calvinist minister, for arguing questions of dogma, Mrs. Elizabeth Packard's life was transformed from a nineteenth-century wife to a crusading reformer and pioneer feminist. Her plight illustrated the insecurity with which married women lived in an era when husbands could declare wives insane and commit them at whim. Three years after her incarceration and after a dramatic trial she was declared sane. Abandoned and left destitute by her husband, Mrs. Packard poured her energies into reforming the laws that had so ill-treated her. She wrote books, gave lectures and traveled to thirty-one states, lobbying for legislative reforms and challenging psychiatric thinking. She was directly or indirectly responsible for legal changes that made it unlawful in the United States to institutionalize any person without judicial approval and brought about many changes in attitudes toward the mentally ill. By the time she died in 1897, Mrs. Packard had achieved national and international prominence. Here is a dramatic social and cultural history of the time. Mrs. Packard's life will serve as a beacon to today's women and a revelation of what a woman's life was like a century ago. Reconstructed from Mrs. Packard's own writings, her husband's journals, newspapers, legal and medical records, plus an extensive cache of family letters and photographs, this is the untold story of one woman who made a difference. - Jacket flap.