Character Profiles

Elizabeth Packard: A passionate, intelligent and independent woman of deep faith and compassion.  An innate caregiver, Mrs. Packard is the mother of six, and her love for her children sustains her through the horrors of her incarceration at Jacksonville Asylum.  She draws others to her with her natural charisma but is unafraid to speak out against anyone who questions her right to her personal religious beliefs.

I may have differing beliefs from you or my husband, but I am not insane. Dr. McFarland thinks his charge is to keep me here until I believe what my husband believes. Since I can not ever believe again in what I consider to be my husband’s narrow views of Christ, does that mean I must stay in an insane asylum for the rest of my life?

Dr. McFarland: The charming, manipulative and intelligent superintendent of Jacksonville.  He is attracted to Mrs. Packard’s strength and spirit but is frustrated by what he perceives as her inability to act with reason. 

…Though moral perversity is an institutionable disorder, in most cases it can be cured … if the patient is willing. Reverend Packard, I leave you with your wife to say good-bye…Mrs. Packard, let me remind you that you will have every special privilege here while under my watch.  Quite frankly, I don’t think you should be here very long.

Theophilus Packard: A conservative Calvinist minister who sees his wife’s theological disagreements with him as a direct challenge to his moral convictions. He fears new ideas as a threat to his absolute sense of right and wrong.

Gentlemen, understand—I am a minister of the Old School. My wife did destroy my  congregation…She did destroy the very foundation of our marriage and family life. Further more, if the kinds of ideas she has adopted in the past few years—these ‘liberal ideas’ as you call them— are allowed and encouraged to flourish, they will endanger, I fear, the very  foundation of this country! May I remind you, gentlemen, that our country was founded on exactly those princip—

Mrs. Bonner: A matron in the asylum who uses brute force to wrest compliance from her patients.  Her position of authority, combined with the difficult conditions of the asylum have shaken her own sanity and she finds a dangerous pleasure in her power over the inmates. 

Step lively ladies, you heard the doctor! Come on, now! Move quickly, Mrs. Chapman!  Or I’ll lose my patience with ya. You don’t want that now, do ya?  Mrs. Stockton, I’ll knock yer carcass from here to Kingdom Come if ya don’t move along.  Holy Joseph! Git on with ya!

Mrs. Chapman: A perceptive patient in the 7th Ward, the ward for the most capable and coherent patients.  Like Mrs. Packard, she maintains that she is sane, and shares Mrs. Packard’s misery at being forced to live without her children.

ELIZABETH
How long have you been here?

MRS. CHAPMAN
3,446 days.  But who counts days? […] I refused to recant, you see.  I wouldn’t give [my husband] the pleasure.  So he’s kept me here.  I wouldn’t be surprised if I die here. Many have, you know.

Mrs. Tenney: The meek and gentle matron of the 8th Ward, the ward for the violent and hopelessly insane.  She attempts to make her patients comfortable, despite the limited resources afforded them by the asylum, and becomes one of Mrs. Packard’s closest allies.

Well, I do care, Mrs. Packard! Come on.  Up with you!  If you remain in this bed, you will die in this bed. I have seen it before.  Come on, up you go…

Mrs. Stockton: An older inmate who has been at Jacksonville for over ten years.  She offers comfort and support to Mrs. Packard when she is feeling low, although she is herself both mentally and physically fragile as a result of the treatment she’s endured.

You are sane, Elizabeth. Keep saying that to yourself over and over.  I am sane, I am sane.  Let it become a little ditty in your head: I am sane.

Mr. Blackman: A rational, thoughtful man, chair of Jacksonville’s board of trustees.  Unlike Theophilus Packard, his firm religious beliefs are not his actions’ only guide.

Thank you, Mrs. Packard. Though I cannot for one moment sanction your characterization of Calvinism, or Puritanism!—you have presented a cogent and mostly rational treatise on the subject

Arthur and Libby Packard: Two of Mrs. Packard’s children.  Eighteen months and ten years old when the play begins, they are  five and thirteen at its end.