Twisted Sisters: Women, Crime and Deviance in Scotland since 1400 (review)

The study of women's history in Scotland is still at a relatively embryonic stage in comparison to the advanced nature of gender studies elsewhere. This collection of essays emerged from a Scottish Women's History Network conference held in 2000 and builds upon earlier edited volumes such as E. Ewen & M. Meikle (eds.), Women in Scotland, c.1100-1750 (1999) and T. Brotherstone, D. Simonton & O. Walsh (eds.), Gendering Scottish History (1999). Twisted Sisters, however, proposes to go beyond the dominant themes of such earlier collections which examined women within a traditional, passive context. While the editors acknowledge that, within Scottish society, women were constrained by the church, the legal system, social standing and ideology, the various essays in this book seeks to offer 'a new perspective on accepted norms of female behaviour', challenging 'the received view of women as necessarily restrained by the conventions of their time'. These articles examine how the actions of women, viewed as 'twisted by definition', could be regarded as positive and an agent for change. In order to do this, the essays have been based around two core themes, 'twisting virtue: women and deviancy' and 'twisted vice: women, crime and punishment'.

The four controbutions grouped together under the latter of these headings engage well with the theme of crime and punishment, exploring the circumstances that forced women to turn to crime, and how female criminal activity was perceived by others, notably the burgh councils and kirk sessions. Lynn Abrams and Anne-Marie Kilday focus their attention on infanticide, a crime regarded as most unnatural for women. Abrams looks to Shetland where eighteenth-century ideas of female domesticity and virtue were not prevalent until the mid-nineteenth century. Within this context she examines the changing attitudes towards, and perceptions of, women found guilty or suspected of the crime of child murder. By focusing on analysis of contemporary accounts of the female body, how women perceived their own status and that of their child as well as the role of the kirk, changing attitudes towards infanticide in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries are emphasised. Although the legal system no longer regarded women found guilty of infanticide as inherently evil, the kirk session continued to assert a significant controlling influence over women, both the individual and the wider female community. This fear of church discipline, alongside loss of reputation and abandonment by a partner, was a factor put forward as a cause of infanticide, a conclusion reiterated by Kilday in her analysis of infanticide in south-west Scotland during the late eighteenth century, although she also points to economic considerations as well.

The role of the kirk and its attempts to enforce church discipline reappears on a number of occasions within this collection. Gordon DesBrisay focuses on the seventeenth century and engages with the wider debate regarding the role of the kirk in early modern society, although this was published before he could engage with the arguments of Margo Todd. While he makes a case for the dou-ble-standards of the church during this period, his analysis appears to be based on a modern perspective, not an early modern one, and at times he seems to ignore his own statements regarding the attitudes of men, society and the kirk. Therefore, while his examination of punishments meted out to men and women in various cases does suggest some element of a double-standard, this needs to be examined within a contemporary context. Moving away from the controlling influence of kirk sessions in Scotland, Elizabeth Ewen examines the role of burgh councils, analysing the emerging conflict between municipal legislation and the necessities of daily life for women. In doing so Ewen contrasts the idealised view of women with the reality of day-to-day existence for the vast majority of the female population, using abundant examples to show how women could be criminalised as a result of...