Abstract
Di Ciolla and Pasolini provide an interdisciplinary study on gender(ed) violence which draws on the critical tools of literary and textual analysis, intersected with theories and methodologies from the field of cultural criminology. They analyse three contemporary European “domestic noirs”, comparing their representations of mothers as perpetrators of crimes with the intelligence on gender(ed) violence that comes from studies in criminology and cultural criminology. Di Ciolla and Pasolini assess the extent to which literature and criminology can work synergetically towards a better understanding of women and crime.
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Notes
- 1.
Susan E. Chase and Mary Frances Rogers, Mothers and Children: Feminist Analyses and Personal Narratives (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2001); Shulamith Firestone, The Dialectic of Sex: The Case for Feminist Revolution (New York: Morrow Quill Paperbacks, 1970); Adrienne Rich, Of Woman Born: Motherhood as Experience and Institution (New York: Norton, 1976).
- 2.
Arguably the most sensationalised case in the UK is that of Myra Hindley, who was convicted in 1965 for the abduction and murder of five children, and who died in jail in 2002. Hindley was considered as the epitome of female monstrosity, that had to be excised from society: although she engaged with psychiatric rehabilitation programmes while in jail, she was always denied parole. More recently, public shock was caused by the cases of Karen Matthews, who in 2008 kidnapped her own daughter to claim ransom money; and Vanessa George, a nursery nurse convicted for taking indecent images of young children in her care, which she passed to a known paedophile. Although in all three cases there was strong evidence that the women were under some form of coercion from male accomplices, the full force of social contempt and condemnation fell on them, ultimately guilty of not complying with the normative definition of femalehood and motherhood.
A summary overview of the most sensationalised cases of filicide in Italy seems to suggest that women act on their own accord. The case that has possibly generated the strongest public outcry is the so-called Cogne murder in 2002, where a mother was convicted for bludgeoning her toddler son to death. The initial life sentence was commuted to house arrest after six years in prison.
In the majority of reported cases of filicide, the press attribute to the mothers’ mental health issues—normally depression or psychotic conditions—the root cause of the violence. The cases of sexual abuse or child neglect, conversely, are statistically more likely to involve men: mothers become complicit by not denouncing the crimes, for shame or for fear of being abandoned by the offender, usually their partner.
- 3.
Nicole Rafter, ‘Crime, Film and Criminology: Recent Sex-Crime Movies’, Theoretical Criminology, 11 (2007).
- 4.
Derek Raymond, The Hidden Files (London: Little, Brown and Company, 1992); Caroline Reitz, Detecting the Nation: Fictions of Detection and the Imperial Venture (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 2004); Maurizio Ascari, A Counter-History of Crime Fiction: Supernatural, Gothic, Sensational (London; New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007).
- 5.
This is the thesis supported by Dorothy Roberts in ‘Motherhood and Crime’, Social Text (1995). A case of a fictional work which has become a reference for criminology scholars is the series The Wire (2002–2008). See David Lewis, Dennis Rodgers and Michael Woolcock, ‘The Fiction of Development: Literary Representation as a Source of Authoritative Knowledge’, The Journal of Development Studies, 44.2 (2008), 198–216.
- 6.
Rafter, p. 415.
- 7.
Cesare Lombroso and Guglielmo Ferrero, The Female Offender, Introduction by W. Douglas Morrison (New York: Appleton, 1899 [1893]); William Isaac Thomas, Sex and Society: Studies in the Social Psychology of Sex (Chicago: University Press; London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1907).
- 8.
Sigmund Freud, New Introductory Lectures on Psycho-Analysis, trans. by Walter John Herbert Sprott (London: L. and Virginia Woolf at the Hogarth Press, and the Institute of Psycho-analysis, 1933).
- 9.
Otto Pollak, The Criminality of Women (Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1950).
- 10.
Chantal Lavergne, Marie Jacob, and Claire Chamberland, ‘Contributions Féministes À La Compréhension Des Mauvais Traitements Envers Les Enfants [Feminist Contributions to the Understanding of Child Maltreatment]’, Violence envers les femmes et les enfants en contexte familial: Théories explicatives et données empirique, 69e Congrès de l’ACFAS, University of Sherbrooke (2001). There are a number of other studies that investigate the complex dynamics of female violence, all pointing away from the simplistic notion of the impossibility for women to offend, but falling outside the scope of our discussion. Of particular interest are the studies of Steven Box and Steve Hale, ‘Liberation and Female Criminality in England and Wales’, The British Journal of Criminology, 23 (1983) and Sandra Walklate, Gender and Crime: An Introduction (Belfast: Prentice Hall/Harvester Wheatsheaf 1995), who put to the test the proposition that women’s emancipation and liberation could be contributing factors that led to the increase in female offending. These studies found no evidence of causal connections and disputed the contention as an argument aimed at minimising the achievements of the women’s liberation movement. Michele Burman, ‘Girls Behaving Violently?’, Criminal Justice Matters, 53.1 (2003), and Amy Reckdenwald and Karen F. Parker, ‘The Influence of Gender Inequality and Marginalization on Types of Female Offending’, Homicide Studies, 12 (2008) investigated the links between violent female offenders and the role of sex in socialisation processes, as well as the impact of socio-economic marginalisation on the type of female offending. Following the principles of control theory (which proposes the idea that our tendency to deviate depends on the strength of our two control systems—inner controls and outer controls—and their ability to regulate our desire to obtain personal gains through deviation from social norms), Pat Carlen (Women, Crime and Poverty, Milton Keynes: Open University Press, 1988) has demonstrated that for some women crime can be ‘liberating’, a route to a more satisfying (albeit atypical) lifestyle than that afforded by the conventional labour and marriage markets, or by welfare payments. This view echoes earlier findings that showed that weak social bonds, and a weakened sense of commitment, attachment, involvement and belief, mean that engaging in criminal activity, against gender expectations, offers better rewards to women than fulfilling a caring role at home. See Travis Hirschi, Causes of Delinquency (Piscataway: Transaction publishers, 2002).
- 11.
See Shulamith Firestone, The Dialectic of Sex: The Case for Feminist Revolution (New York: Morrow Quill Paperbacks, 1970); Adrienne Rich, Of Woman Born: Motherhood as Experience and Institution (New York: Norton, 1976). See also Chase and Rogers (2001).
- 12.
See Nancy J. Chodorow, The Reproduction of Mothering: Psychoanalysis and the Sociology of Gender (Berkeley; London: University of California Press, 1978), and Elisabeth Badinter and Roger DeGaris, The Myth of Motherhood: An Historical View of the Maternal Instinct, A Condor Book (London: Souvenir Press (E&A), 1981). For De Beauvoir, see for example the novels Mémoires d’une jeune fille rangée ([Memories of a Dutiful Daughter] Paris: Gallimard, 1958), Une mort très douce ([A Very Easy Death] Paris: Gallimard, 1964), and the chapter on motherhood in Le deuxième sexe ([The Second Sex] Paris: Gallimard, 1949).
- 13.
Brid Featherstone, ‘Taking Mothering Seriously: The Implications for Child Protection’, Child and Family Social Work, 4 (1999); Rozsika Parker, ‘The Production and Purposes of Maternal Ambivalence’, in Mothering and Ambivalence, ed. by Wendy Hollway and Brid Featherstone (London; New York: Routledge,1997), 17–36; Wendy Hollway and Brid Featherstone, Mothering and Ambivalence (London; New York: Routledge, 1997).
- 14.
Dominique Damant et al., ‘Taking Child Abuse and Mothering Into Account: Intersectional Feminism as an Alternative for the Study of Domestic Violence’, Affilia: Journal of Women and Social Work, 23.2 (2008); Leslie McCall, ‘The Complexity of Intersectionality’, Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, 30.3 (2005); Kerry Carrington, ‘Girls and Violence: The Case for a Feminist Theory of Female Violence’, International Journal of Crime, Justice and Social Democracy, 2.2 (2013).
- 15.
For the first definition of intersectionality as a concept that brings into focus the nuances of all systems of oppression, see Kimberlé Crenshaw’s ‘Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex: A Black Feminist Critique of Antidiscrimination Doctrine, Feminist Theory and Antiracist Politics’, University of Chicago Legal Forum (1989), 139–167, p. 140.
- 16.
McCall, p. 1780.
- 17.
Brid Featherstone, ‘Victims or Villains? Women Who Physically Abuse Their Children’, in Violence and Gender Relations: Theories and Interventions, ed. by Barbara Fawcett, Brid Featherstone, Jeff R. Hearn and Cristine Toft (London: Sage, 1996), 178–189, p. 183.
- 18.
Damant et al., p. 127.
- 19.
Parker, p. 18.
- 20.
Parker, p. 25.
- 21.
Parker, p. 25.
- 22.
Belinda Morrissey, ‘Crises of Representation, or Why Don’t Feminists Talk About Myra?’, Australian Feminist Law Journal, 16 (2002); Tracey Peter, ‘Mad, Bad, or Victim? Making Sense of Mother–Daughter Sexual Abuse’, Feminist Criminology, 1 (2006); Hilary Allen, ‘Rendering Them Harmless: The Professional Portrayal of Women Charged with Serious Violent Crimes’, in Gender Crime and Justice, ed. by Pat Carlen and Anne Worrall (Milton Keynes: Open University, 1987).
- 23.
A report published by the Ministry of Justice in 2014, presenting data for England and Wales shows that, in the year 2013, women represented 18% of all arrests made, and 25% of convictions (Ministry of Justice, Statistics on Women and the Criminal Justice System 2013, November 2014. Available at https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/380090/women-cjs-2013.pdf [accessed 10 November 2016]). In 2015, women represented around 5% of the overall prison population in the UK. See also http://www.womeninprison.org.uk/research/key-facts.php [accessed 11 November 2016].The data is in line with historical trends. See also Mike Hough, Jessica Jacobson, and Andrew Millie, The Decision to Imprison: Sentencing and the Prison Population (London: Prison Reform Trust, 2003).
- 24.
Ibid. See also data from the Italian National Institute of Statistics, which compares Italian data with data from the other countries of the European Union http://www.istat.it/it/files/2015/03/detenuti-2015-1.pdf?title=Detenuti+nelle+carceri+italiane+-+19%2Fmar%2F2015+-+Testo+integrale.pdf. [accessed 11 November 2016].
- 25.
The data is available for the UK. See the graph in the Ministry of Justice report, p. 65, which shows that cruelty or neglect of children accounts for roughly 13% of the crimes of ‘violence against the person’ committed by women, and 1% ca of the same category of crimes committed by men.
- 26.
This is the situation described by the Italian National Observatory on the Health of children and adolescents (Paidòss) in a 2014 report. Data from 300 paediatricians who had observed signs of ill treatment in their young patients shows that 80% of the cases of unreported child abuse in Italy are perpetrated by mothers. Whilst we acknowledge the limitation of this report (because of the small number of respondents and the limitation of the sample to children who were taken to be seen by a paediatrician), its findings invite some reflection on the role of mothers in children’s wellbeing. Curiously, the first systematic report on child abuse in Italy, produced by the National Observatory on Childhood and Adolescence does not provide significant information on the (gender of the) perpetrator of the abuses. See http://www.garanteinfanzia.org/sites/default/files/documenti/Indagine_maltrattamento_TDH_Cismai_Garante_mag15.pdf [Accessed 14 November 2016].
- 27.
The Ministry of Justice report observes that ‘[t]he type of sentence outcome given at court differs between male and female offenders’. More specifically, ‘[t]he most common disposal given to male offenders [for offences including cruelty to or neglect of children] is an immediate custodial sentence’, whereas, by contrast, ‘the most common disposal given for the offenc[e] of […] cruelty to or neglect of children was a community sentence’. Statistics on Women and the Criminal Justice System 2013, pp. 65–66. Our emphasis. Available at https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/380090/women-cjs-2013.pdf [ accessed 11 November 2016].
- 28.
See Judi Pears and Patricia Noller, ‘Youth Homelessness: Abuse, Gender and the Process of Adjustment to Life on the Streets’, The Australian Journal of Social Issues, 30 (1995). This study cites maternal violence as one of the prime causes of youth homelessness. Kimberly A. Tyler and Ana Mari Cauce finds mothers responsible for one third of the first acts of physical violence against children in ‘Perpetrators of Early Physical and Sexual Abuse among Homeless and Runaway Adolescents’, Child Abuse & Neglect, 26 (2002).
- 29.
Julia Crouch, ‘Genre Bender’ (2013), http://juliacrouch.co.uk/blog/genre-bender [accessed 18 November 2016].
- 30.
Laura Grimaldi and Robin Pickering-Iazzi, Suspicion (Madison, Wis.: University of Wisconsin Press, Terrace Books, 2003) [1996].
- 31.
Véronique Olmi, Beside the Sea (London: Peirene, 2010).
- 32.
Clare Mackintosh, I Let You Go (New York: Berkley Books, 2016).
- 33.
See E. Ann Kaplan, Motherhood and Representation: The Mother in Popular Culture and Melodrama, (London; New York: Routledge, 2013), p. 47. In Freudian psychoanalysis, and in its subsequent developments, the relationship between the child and the mother is divided into two phases: the pre-Oedipal, in which the child perceives no separation with the mother’s body, experiencing a sense of fusion with her, and the post-Oedipal, when a separate sense of self develops, and separation occurs. Fusional motherhood is a psychopathological condition characterised by the mother’s attempts to lock the child in a pre-Oedipal stage, preventing separation and individuation. The main types of fusional motherhood, widely represented in culture, are the self-sacrificing ‘angel of the house’, the overindulgent and the phallic. See also Marianne Hirsch, The Mother/Daughter Plot: Narrative, Psychoanalysis, Feminism (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1989).
- 34.
Although an arrest was made for the murders, the doubt whether the man convicted was in fact the Monster of Florence remained (and possibly still does), generating a number of conspiracy theories and alternative hypotheses.
- 35.
See Parker: ‘Despite the power of unconscious processes, our society continues to have grandiose expectations of mothers. And mothers, with their profound desire to be good mothers, both reproduce and resist these expectations. Wanting to control the uncontrollable, a mother feels painfully culpable when things go wrong’ (p. 34).
- 36.
Parker says ‘Yet, even while mothers are accorded overwhelming responsibility for their children’s development, their authority is all the time circumscribed, subjected as they are to the critical gaze of a network of social structure’ (p. 34).
- 37.
Peter, p. 283.
- 38.
See Elvio Guagnini, ‘Alcuni esemplari recenti di giallo italiano dentro e fuori gli spazi istituzionali’, Problemi, 86 (1989), 257–288, p. 281.
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Brid Featherstone, ‘Victims or Villains? Women Who Physically Abuse Their Children’, in Violence and Gender Relations: Theories and Interventions, ed. by Barbara Fawcett, Brid Featherstone, Jeff R. Hearn and Cristine Toft (London: Sage, 1996), 178–189.
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Di Ciolla, N., Pasolini, A. (2018). The Violent Mother in Fact and Fiction. In: Joyce, L., Sutton, H. (eds) Domestic Noir. Crime Files. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-69338-5_8
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