Five Gender Representations of Women Who Kill

Abstract

Part I develops a typology of five discourses of femininity through which women who have committed, or been accused of, unusual murders have been constructed. It does this by undertaking a review of well-known cases and cases that were high profile within the place and time in which they occurred. In each section, the constituent elements of the discourse are outlined, whether these derive from expert knowledge and/or wider cultural assumptions, and three or four illustrative cases are discussed. Part I demonstrates the recurrent nature of these representations, whilst acknowledging that they carry different meanings and symbolic significance in different places and times. These five discourses are not intended to be exhaustive, either in terms of the range of gender representations of unusual cases of women who kill or in relation to each case that is examined. Individual cases are analysed through one discourse, which was important in shaping the woman’s gender representation. However, this does not mean that there were no other relevant discursive constructions of gender, merely that those selected were especially prominent.