The Crimes of Womanhood: Defining Femininity in a Court of Law

5. Womanhood as Asset and Liability: Lizzie Andrew Borden

5. Womanhood as Asset and Liability: Lizzie Andrew Borden Lizzie Borden took an axe, Gave her mother forty whacks. When she saw what she had done, Gave her father forty one. —Traditional rhyme Nearly every study of the Borden case includes this verse, and there is no reason for this chapter to stray from convention. That this bit of schoolyard doggerel can still occasionally be heard on the playground attests to the staying power of the legend of this woman. That it got the details completely wrong attests to the power of a narrative to survive despite its contradiction of the facts. The presupposition of the rhyme is that Lizzie was guilty. A common presupposition of later research on her trial is that she “got off” because she was a woman. Both assumptions oversimplify the complex interplay of social forces that converged in Fall River, Massachusetts, in 1892 and the period that followed. While it is true that Lizzie’s gender was probably an asset at her trial, it was not the only reason she was acquitted. In fact, gender norms were also used by the prosecution to make her look guilty. The basic qualities of femininity, as narrative elements, could be used to either end. It took the interaction of these with certain elements of class and social standing to make the pendulum swing in Borden’s favor. Like any unsolved violent crime, the Borden case has inspired endless speculation. Did Lizzie do it? If not, then who? What was the motive? What happened to the weapon? These questions have been rehashed endlessly. The theories that have been produced are interesting in themselves for their variety. Fingers have mainly been pointed at Lizzie Borden, who supposedly acted through greed or jealous hatred of her stepmother. Other writers have accused her sister, Emma; the servant, Bridget; Lizzie’s rumored lover; and 86 the crimes of womanhood a purported illegitimate child of her father who resembled the archetypal wild-eyed stranger. It is not the goal of this chapter to reexamine these issues; what “really” happened is not pertinent here. Rather, the focus is on the rhetorical use of gender-related narratives to persuade the community of guilt or innocence. Gender was indeed an important theme during Lizzie Borden’s trial, but it was not the only theme used by the defense and it was probably not the only narrative used by the jury to free her. The narratives created in this case are also interesting because they illustrate the many ways in which rhetors attempt to mold pieces of empirical reality into meaningful wholes. The Borden case was mounted and argued almost entirely on the basis of circumstantial evidence: There was no direct evidence pointing to the guilt of any individual. There were no witnesses. There was no confession. There was not even a “smoking axe.” Someone had killed two people, that much was clear. The web of secondhand evidence only indicated possible killers, and the field was narrowed through human deduction. As a result, the only way to discover what “really” happened was to construct a symbolic reality that would be compelling to the audience being asked to judge the evidence. That determination would have very real consequences for the “guilty” party—the death penalty. Of course, on the broadest level, all “reality” is circumstantial. No human being can observe every moment in the universe firsthand. The final form of that picture depends entirely upon how a persuader can arrange that clutter into a meaningful whole. The trial of Lizzie Borden shows us two opposing forces, each offering diametrically opposed explanations of the same circumstantial evidence. By examining these explanations, we can learn a lot about the methods through which realities come to exist. The Case of Lizzie Andrew Borden In 1892, Fall River was a prosperous industrial town of about 75,000 people. Although there were new immigrants working in the cotton mills, for the most part residents were native to New England. Immigrants and Yankees lived in segregated communities that rarely mixed, a fact that was to have a noticeable effect on the search for suspects. The community was still small enough that people paid close attention to their neighbors. They knew each other, and each others’ business, fairly well. Yet there was apparently no hint as to what was about to happen to one of the most prominent families in town. Lizzie Andrew Borden...