| Description |
1 online resource |
| Contents |
1674-1753: strumpets and wenches -- 1754-1833: passion and the frailty of human nature -- 1834-1873: becoming women and ogresses -- 1874-1913: incapable of forming a sound judgement |
| Summary |
"Contemporary studies have concluded that women are far less likely to kill than men and that when women do kill, they do so within the family. This book examines the evolution of this pattern in homicide trials in London from the late seventeenth century until just before the First World War. Obviously, the number of prosecutions for homicide is not the same as the number of homicides committed. Which deaths were considered homicides and in what circumstances women were culpable illustrate profound changes in the prevailing assumptions about women. The outcomes of trials and the portrayals of these women in the press illuminate changes in perceptions of women's status and their physical and mental limitations. This book breaks new ground in that the existing studies of gender and homicide have been narrowly focused chronologically. Though the scholarship for the early modern period is rich, the divide between early modern and modern is rarely crossed. A longer time frame makes it possible to discern which trends are brief anomalies and which represent significant change or continuity. Rather than a simple matter of patriarchal control, gender expectations fluctuated widely over time. Early modern women who killed were wicked, eighteenth-century female killers had succumbed to passion, nineteenth-century women were vulnerable to external threats to their roles as wives and mothers, while early twentieth-century women were most often seen as victims of their own biological shortcomings"--Publisher's description |
| Bibliography |
Includes bibliographical references and index |
| Notes |
Description based on online resource; title from web page (Oxford Scholarship Online, viewed on November 24, 2020) |
| Subject |
Women murderers -- England -- London -- History
|
|
Women murderers
|
|
England -- London
|
| Genre/Form |
Electronic books
|
|
History
|
| Form |
Electronic book
|
| ISBN |
9780192608062 |
|
0192608061 |
|
9780191895562 |
|
0191895563 |
|
9780192608079 |
|
019260807X |
|
