Women Who Kill [JONES]

I've had this on my shelf for years and assumed it to be a compendium that could be subtitled, "Profiles of Female Serial Killers". It is quite different being an overtly feminist view on women who kill through the ages, particularly those who kill men. From the Foreword:

If this book leaves the impression that men have conspired to keep women down, that is exactly the impression I mean to convey; for I believe that men could not have succeeded as well as they have without concerted effort.

It's a wild ride: Witch burnings, women so idolized that capitol sentences cause hangmen to resign ("...ladies remained the same pretty, foolish, harmless, and despised creatures.."), the scorned woman, legalized corporal punishment from their show more husbands, greater equality under the law bringing in women for execution, then the awareness of the complexity of long-term abuse leading to a murderous act. (I recall this being "in the cold of passion" in another book I can't locate.)

In the 1860s:

Feminists...found fault with the man-made legal system. They campaigned for woman suffrage specifically so that women would have a say in formulating the laws under which they were forced to live. They argued women should be tried by a jury of their peers.

One case apparently caught in the violent birth of this new view of women who kill was Alice Crimmins. Crimmins was charged with killing her two children, 5-year-old Eddie and 4-year-old Alice Marie, known as Missy, who went missing on July 14, 1965. After numerous criminal trials and appeals, Crimmins was convicted of the manslaughter of Missy. No evidence could be found tying anyone to the deaths. Crimmins was followed and covertly recorded by the New York Police Department for three years, before finally being charged and going to trial in 1968. She was found guilty of the manslaughter of Missy and sentenced to five to twenty years' imprisonment. This conviction was overturned on appeal, and in 1971 a second trial resulted in Crimmins being convicted of the first-degree murder of Eddie Jr. and the manslaughter of Missy. In 1973 both convictions were overturned, before Crimmins was re-convicted of the manslaughter of Missy in 1973. She was paroled in 1977. The Casey Anthony trial has been compared by some in the media to the Crimmins trial. show less

Interesting.
Unfortunately this really only applies to white women. The author uses incomplete statistics for Black Women and it's frustrating.
A Black Woman is killed every 21 hrs by a domestic partner. The statistics for white women are considerably kinder. This author just takes raw numbers without acknowledging how racism impacts the way data like this is collected for POC. So the statistics about white women are accurate but not for Black Women. Also no discussion of the relationship between black citizens and police, which also result in under reporting.
I'm tired of 'feminists' doing this to Black and POC marginalized genders and actingine what applies to white women applies to all women, when that's ludicrous.
Feminism is also about show more addressing how white women are the white men of the feminist movement. show less

I read a lot of crime fiction, so I thought I would enjoy this. Unfortunately, it was a little too "text book" for me. The tales of the injustices perpetrated against women were definitely thought provoking, but were presented so matter of factly that it was hard to get into the book. It wasn't until over half way through, when the case of Lizzie Borden was presented, that I started to enjoy what I was reading.

This book certainly points out the inconsistencies in sentencing women throughout the past few hundred years. Political considerations swing from overly harsh punishments, to much too lenient. It was definitely eye opening. Unfortunately, this book was not very exciting to read.