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Loading... Trials of Passion: Crimes Committed in the Name of Love and Madnessby Lisa Appignanesi
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Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. No current Talk conversations about this book. Within this book are 3 non-fiction reads of famous murders and subsequent trials of those who chose to kill in the name of love: Christina Edmunds (British) and the Chocolate Cream Murders, Marie Biere (French) who only wounds her ex-lover, and Manhattan playboy Harry Thaw who kills his wife's lover, famed architect, Stanford White. This was a fairly interesting book, although I felt at times the author got side-tracked. 444 pages ( ) In Brighton in the late Victorian era a spinster is accused of a poisoning spree provoked by a delusion that her doctor is in love with her. In Paris 10 years later a singer shoots her erstwhile rich lover after the death of their child. In the 1900s a multi-millionaire kills his wife's discarded lover. In each case the reasoning behind the crime is linked to madness. This book explores the changing attitudes to insanity as a reason for crime and also plots the understanding of mental instability within the criminal justice system using three infamous trials as main exemplars. What this book is not is a 'true crime' book, it's far more detailed and complex than that. Appignanesi has tried to look at the changes to the nature and understanding of madness in relation to crimes of passion from a legal and also a psychological perspective. The level of detail and research is superb but it also makes this quite an intellectual book rather than a history or entertainment. I found it a fascinating but not simple read. no reviews | add a review
"Using sensational crimes committed in America, Britain, and France, this dramatic narrative takes madness and passion into the courts and puts these provocative themes on trial" --
"A journey into the heart of dark passions and the crimes they impel, and their trial by daylight and doctors. When passion is in the picture, what is criminal, what is sane, what is mad or simply bad? Through court and asylum records, letters and newspaper accounts, this book brings to life some sensational trials between 1870 and 1914, a period when the psychiatric professions were consolidating their hold on our understanding of what is human. Outside fiction, individual emotions and the inner life had rarely been publicly discussed: now, in an increasingly popular press and its courtroom reports, people avidly consumed accounts of transgressive sexuality, savage jealousy and forbidden desires. These stood revealed as aspects not only of those labelled mad, but potentially, of everyone. With great storytelling flair and a wealth of historical detail, Lisa Appignanesi teases out the vagaries of passion and the clashes between the law and the clinic as they stumble towards a (sometimes reviled) collaboration. Sexual etiquette and class roles, attitudes to love, madness and gender, notions of respectability and honor, insanity and lunacy, all are at play in that vital forum in which public opinion is shaped--the theater of the courtroom" -- No library descriptions found. |
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Google Books — Loading... GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)364.1523Social sciences Social problems and services; associations Criminology Crimes and Offenses Offenses against persons Homicide MurderLC ClassificationRatingAverage:
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