Women Who Kill Men

Morris Bakken Gordon, Brenda Farrington

Description

The late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries were a revolutionary period in the lives of women, and the shifting perceptions of women and their role in society were equally apparent in the courtroom. Women Who Kill Men examines eighteen sensational cases of women on trial for murder from 1870 to 1958.

 

The fascinating details of these murder trials, documented in court records and embellished newspaper coverage, mirrored the changing public image of women. Although murder was clearly outside the norm for standard female behavior, most women and their attorneys relied on gendered stereotypes and language to create their defense and sometimes to leverage their status in a patriarchal system. Those who could successfully dress and act the part of the victim were most often able to win the sympathies of the jury. Gender mattered. And though the norms shifted over time, the press, attorneys, and juries were all informed by contemporary gender stereotypes.

Sujets

• Histoire
• Local history
• US West
• Legal history
• History of the Americas
• California

Informations

• Publié par: Nebraska Paperback
• Date de parution: 01 octobre 2009
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780803226579
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

W O M EN W H OK I L LM EN

Law in the American West

S E R I E S E D I T O R

John R. Wunder, University of Nebraska–Lincoln

W O M EN W H OK I L LM EN

California Courts, Gender, and the Press

G O R D O NB A K K E NM O R R I S & B R E N D A F A R R I N G T O N

U N I V E R S I T YO FN E B R A S K AP R E S S — L I N C O L N&L O N D O N

©2009by the Board of Regents of the University of Nebraska

A portion of chapter1has been previously published in “The Limits of Patriarchy: The ‘Unwritten Law’ in California Legal History,” inCalifornia History: A Topical Approach, ed. Gordon Morris Bakken. Copyright © 2003by Harlan Davidson, Inc. Reprinted by permission.

All rights reserved Manufactured in the United States of America

Library of Congress Cataloging- in-Publication Data

Bakken, Gordon Morris.Women who kill men: California courts, gender, and the press / Gordon Morris Bakken and Brenda Farrington.  p. cm. — (Law in the American West) Includes bibliographical references and index. isbn 978-0-8032-1361-6(cloth : alk. paper) 1. Trials (Murder)—California.2. Women— California—Legal status, laws, etc.—History. 3discrimination in criminal justice. Sex administration—California—History. 4. Women murderers—California—Social aspects. I. Farrington, Brenda. II. Title. kf221.m8b36 2009 345.794'02523—dc22 2009014060

Set in Sabon by Kim Essman.

To Our Mentors: John Phillip Reid New York University Law School and David Ibsen Fullerton College

C O N T E N T S

Acknowledgments . . ix

Introduction:The Feminine Side of Women on Trial. .1 1. Mirror, Mirror on the Wall, Who Is the Sanest of Them  All?:The Insanity Defense in Court and in the Press. .16 2. Good Riddance:Justifiable Homicides of Enemy  Deviants. .55 3. Toward the New Woman:Feminine Wiles on Trial. .81 4. The Haves and the Have Nots:Women on Trial  during the Great Depression. .113 5. War Women of the1940s:Evolutionary Women  in Revolutionary Times. .136 6. Celebrity on Trial:Tinseltown Tarnished. .161

Conclusion . .186 Notes . .199 Bibliography . .249 Index . .263

A C K N O W L E D G M E N T S

We owe a great deal to Keith Pacholl of the University of West Georgia. Keith read the entire manuscript and made invalu- able suggestions. Karen Lystra of California State University, Fullerton, read the manuscript with an eye to the meaning of love letters in trials and American culture. Her insights were critical and incorporated into the manuscript. We thank our three outside readers for their significant suggestions. Clare McKanna Jr. made a variety of insightful comments, and his suggested changes are now in the text. Our anonymous readers made extensive suggestions for changes to bring the manuscript together as a book. We worked for months putting the suggestions into the text and making im- portant distinctions for certain cases. The two readers sub- stantially focused our work and arbitrated a real difference of opinion between the authors. As she has in the past, Profes- sor Farrington clearly saw the holes her coauthor had failed to visualize. We thank one of the inspirational leaders in education, Ron- ald Heusser of Santiago High School in Garden Grove, Cali- fornia. On Saturday, February9,2008, Santiago High School lost a good friend and colleague, Ronald Vincent Heusser. Heusser opened the school in1961as a boys’ physical edu- cation teacher and the athletic director, and served in various positions throughout his tenure at Santiago, most notably