Rights and Wrongs: Talking with Emily Mann about Mrs. Packard
Dramaturg Douglas Langworthy recently spoke with Emily Mann about her new play.
Doug: What was it about Mrs. Packard’s story that made you want to dramatize it?
Emily: I read a one-page synopsis of her life on the recommendation of a friend, and her story stunned me. I did not know a woman could be thrown into a lunatic asylum in this country simply because she disagreed with her husband. Elizabeth was an educated woman, but like many women of her day she was ignorant of the fact that she did not have the right to think her own thoughts; she didn’t know that as a married woman she was property of her husband and a legal non-entity. The experience in the asylum in both the ward for sane women and her experience in the violent ward woke her up and transformed her. My plays often are about giving voice to the voiceless. Elizabeth’s voice was not only almost silenced in her own day, but like many women, her story has nearly disappeared from history.
How was writing this play different for you than writing a documentary play?
It’s been liberating. It took a combination of all the skills used in writing a documentary—research, editing—because in fact this is inspired by a true story. But it gave me complete freedom to know what the bones of the story were and then fill in from there and create characters and make scenes and tell a story from my imagination. That’s been the great fun of it. If I needed a scene, I could write it. I didn’t somehow have to construct it out of spoken word or found text.
How close is your play to the actual events, and how much poetic license did you take?
It’s quite close but I took some license. I had to. There are all kind of things in the real story that are not dramatically useful for a play, so I streamlined some things, left some things out. I’ve had to make composite characters. But I’m pretty true to the basic story.
How did you research the story? How rich is the historical record?
It’s very rich. Elizabeth Packard wrote a lot. After leaving the asylum, she made her living as a writer, so there were her own books. She wrote in the asylum. She kept copious notes and she got testimonies from other women and she wrote it all down. It started in the asylum, but she continued to write until she died. There are letters that she wrote to [fellow Jacksonville inmate] Mrs. Chapman, which are beautiful. There’s also the trial which was short but fascinating. There is one biography of her, The Private War of Mrs. Packard, and that was helpful. There are some historical books on madness in which she is cited or her case is discussed. And I’m still reading about Calvinism.
Did you have to research mental institutions in the nineteenth century?
A lot of it was in what she wrote. Mostly I need to know what she went through, so it’s mainly just poring over her books. But yes, I did some research on the horrors of the nineteenth-century asylum system.
Mrs. Packard was very strong in the face of adversity. Where do you think she got her strength from?
During the trial, the witnesses for both the defense and the prosecution said she was very passionate, had a nervous temperament and was very strong willed. So where did that strong will come from? I don’t know. Most of us are born with our own personalities, I’m convinced of it. You may temper them in some way, but we are who we are. She clearly dazzled people with her mind. Everyone remarked on it. And she was articulate. And she was beautiful. She was used to being listened to. She had a father who listened to her, who took her mind seriously, who had her as well educated as her brothers. So to come up against people telling you no, you can’t think your own thoughts, you’re not allowed to, you are in fact property— well, it enraged her. It shocked her. She was incapable of letting that stand.
Do you think her faith was also a part of it?
Yes, and that’s a part of the story that I clearly had to research very hard because I don’t share it. I think she was a very spiritual woman, and a very deeply religious woman who had her own very personal sense of what it was to be godly. I think she felt she had a special mission, and she was looking for what it was. And I think she thought she found it in the asylum. That same spirituality and godliness gives her a rock solid moral and ethical spine. Like her husband she would not bend. The two of them were equally stubborn and equally unbending, incapable of compromise.
When Dr. McFarland offered her the deal of pretending to agree with her husband and being set free, she refused to go along. Why do you think she refused even if it meant being cut off from her children?
I think she has a horror of lying. It’s a sin. She entered the asylum a sane woman, she will leave a sane woman. But if the deal is I go home and pretend to believe everything my husband says and everything he believes in, I can’t do that to myself and I can’t do it to my children. I can’t live a lie. At one point, because she’s so worried about her children, she does think she will in fact do anything to get out. And then she hears a woman scream. And she says to herself, no, I can’t. That scream has a lot of echoes, one of those echoes is her thinking she would hear that scream for the rest of her life if she lies to get out. She wouldn’t be able to live with herself.
She thinks the best choice is to help the doctor tell the truth. She thinks “I’ll urge him to be the man he would like to be. Let him know he does not have to compromise his ethics. He is a man who wants to heal, and as his loving friend I must tell him to stand up to these husbands and say, ‘No, I will not keep your sane wives here. I don’t care what it costs me, I will tell the truth.’” And he disappoints her. Moreover, he’s infuriated that she dared question his integrity because he needs to believe he is a man of integrity. His rage against her is horrible, and she pays dearly for it.
How do you think this play speaks to the present?
Is it Pascal who said “Good people do terrible things in the name of religion?” We are seeing the results of religious fanaticism all around the world and in our own country at the moment, and of course religious fanaticism is usually disastrous for women. Also—I started writing this when the Abu Ghraib story broke. As in Elizabeth’s story, we saw how absolute power corrupts absolutely. Torturers can go mad, just like their victims. And I am always struck by the fact that what happened to Mrs. Packard and countless other women happened in this country not so very long ago.
