Lizzie Borden Took an Axe

Lizzie Borden’s trial for the brutal murders of her father and stepmother leaves many questions open to narrative interpretation. Borden was acquitted in 1893, but no other suspect was ever charged. Historical memory, including the rhyme that memorializes her (“Lizzie Borden took an axe…”), regards her as guilty for the two murders. The case is well documented in historical records of the family and their prominent position in the Massachusetts town of Fall River, in contemporaneous newspaper accounts, in extensive testimonies from the investigation and trial, and even in photos of the crime scene, but these sources reveal little about Lizzie’s private life and her possible motive. See What I Have Done expands upon the historical record by filling in these elements, using the techniques of fiction to explore what verifiable history cannot tell us about a nineteenth century woman’s life.

Sarah Schmidt’s debut novel imagines 32-year-old Lizzie Borden’s interior life and portrays her as a fragile yet forceful woman who is consumed by the relationships among her family members. See What I Have Done opens with Lizzie looking down at her dead father’s body and calling out “Someone’s killed Father.” Lizzie narrates as doctors, police, and neighbors descend upon the house, questioning her and soon finding the body of her stepmother Abby. Her perspective is feverishly attuned to the smells and tastes of visitors’ bodies, haunted by unsettling childhood memories, and alert to the house itself as she feels it contract, groan, and “move left then right as the heat ground into the walls.” My initial impression was that Lizzie could be either mentally ill and guilty of the murders, or simply tempestuous and innocent of any crime. Schmidt leaves both possibilities open in the early scenes. The novel recalls Margaret Atwood’s Alias Grace (1996), which imagined the interior life and self-narration of Grace Marks, a young servant convicted of a double murder in Toronto in 1843. Alias Grace holds social institutions complicit in violence against vulnerable women, and envisions the ways Marks gains power through revealing and withholding details of her coerced confession. This novel—the most fascinating work of biofiction I have read—explodes gendered categories of guilt and innocence. However, the similarities of the crimes belie the differences in the two women’s lives. Schmidt’s novel echoes Alias Grace at times, but instead of Grace’s canny self-narration we see Lizzie’s distorted, obsessive perceptions of her family.

Lizzie’s story is not the most absorbing thread in See What I Have Done, though. Two other historical figures narrate the novel: older sister Emma Borden and Irish domestic Bridget Sullivan. Their accounts of the days surrounding the murders alternate with Lizzie’s chapters, creating a layered description of the household and the miseries that each female member suffers. We learn about Abby through the other women’s pity for her aging body and annoyance with her heavy, dull presence. Like Lizzie, Emma chafes at her father’s rigidity and resents his remarriage. She recalls her mother’s death and the ways her father and sister thwart her wishes to travel, study art, and create an independent life with a like-minded man. Bridget moves at the periphery of family life, overhearing the sisters’ bickering and accommodating Lizzie’s childish requests. Her experience is that of being simultaneously too close to the appetites and ailments of the family and also isolated, a vent for their frustrations. Like Abby and Emma, she is mired in the household’s summer torpor so that returning to Ireland feels out of reach. Rather than forge bonds to resist patriarchal control, these women withdraw into oppressive solitary worlds.

A fourth, fictional narrator introduces a perspective outside of the 92 Second Street house. Lizzie and Emma’s uncle hires Benjamin to confront Andrew Borden about his treatment of his daughters, and Benjamin travels to Fall River the day before the murders. His mobility and his marginal...