Women, Crime and Language

Women, Crime and Language Frances Gray Women, Crime and Language Also by Frances Gray JOHN ARDEN NOEL COWARD WOMEN AND LAUGHTER Women, Crime and Language Frances Gray Senior Lecturer in English Literature University of Sheffield, UK Consultant Editor: Jo Campling © Frances Gray 2003 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, 90 Tottenham Court Road, London W1T 4LP. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. The author has asserted her right to be identified as the author of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. First published 2003 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS and 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010 Companies and representatives throughout the world PALGRAVE MACMILLAN is the global academic imprint of the Palgrave Macmillan division of St. Martin’s Press, LLC and of Palgrave Macmillan Ltd. Macmillan® is a registered trademark in the United States, United Kingdom and other countries. Palgrave is a registered trademark in the European Union and other countries. ISBN 1–4039–1683–7 hardback This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Gray, Frances (Frances B.) Women, crime and language / Frances Gray; consultant editor, Jo Campling. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 1–4039–1683–7 1. English literature—19th century—History and criticism. 2. Women in literature. 3. English literature—20th century—History and criticism. 4. American literature—History and criticism. 5. Women and literature— Great Britain. 6. Women and literature—United States. 7. Female offenders in literature. 8. English language—Style. 9. Criminals in literature. 10. Sex role in literature. 11. Crime in literature. I. Title. PR468.W6G73 2003 820.9Ј352042––dc21 2003045604 10987654321 12 11 10 09 08 07 06 05 04 03 Printed and bound in Great Britain by Antony Rowe Ltd, Chippenham and Eastbourne for Meg Contents Acknowledgements viii Introduction in Four Scenes 1 1 Condemned Woman 20 2 Guilty Victims 41 3 Speaking Victims 61 4 Survivor Stories 83 5 Picture of Infamy 104 6 Nanny State 126 7 Cruel Mother 147 8 Writing the Dead 169 Afterword 189 Notes 201 Bibliography 203 Index 209 vii Acknowledgements This book would not have been written without the students of the Women, Crime and Justice seminar of the English Literature Department at Sheffield University. Their lively interest and willingness to explore the themes developed here have made them an incompar- able sounding board. My colleagues have provided a constant stream of crime novels; some of these directly influenced these pages, some just kept me entertained, and I am deeply grateful for both. Sarah Daniels took considerable trouble to provide me with the manuscript of Blow Your House Down. I benefited from the insights at several conferences where I first tested out material in some of these chapters; special thanks to Nickianne Moody as the powerhouse behind the Association for Research into Popular Fictions, and to the organizers of the Women Writing Between the Wars Conference at St John’s College, Oxford. It is rare to have an opportunity to work as playwright as well as scholar on the same text and I would like to thank all those concerned with Spoken in Darkness at the Liverpool Playhouse: Anne Imbrie and Joel Stillman of Spanky Pictures for their generosity in allowing us the rights, Mike Bonsall for his energy and enterprise in getting the project off the ground, and Dominic Druce and the cast and crew for bringing it to life. This has at times been a very difficult book to write and my son has tolerated a house full of distressing material with his usual patience and charm. viii Introduction in Four Scenes Scene one: the legitimate stage and the tragic hero In December 1907 the tranquil spectacle of a West End production was disrupted by a piece of Rough Theatre: the entrance of Mrs Beerbohm Tree proclaiming, ‘I have just come from the Court, the Court where young Robert Wood stood in peril of his life. I am glad to be able to tell you that the jury found him not guilty...I was one of those who burst into tears, others burst into cheers which were taken up, echoed and re-echoed by thousands on the streets’ (Hogarth 1954: 211). It was only logical that the climax of the Camden Town Murder Case should be framed by a proscenium arch and articulated with such carefully crafted rhetoric, because it had throughout embodied all the excitements of the Edwardian theatre. Basil Hogarth praises the final speech for the defence by Sir Edward Marshall Hall, acknowledged star of the Old Bailey, in the tones of a first-night critic: In architectonic structure Marshall Hall himself never improved on it. There was not a question that had not its appropriate answer, not a doubt but had its resolution on a perfect cadence. (1954: 211) The theatrical luminaries packing the public galleries of the Central Criminal Court – Henry Irving, Oscar Asche, AEW Mason, Seymour Hicks and Arthur Wing Pinero – would have given their eye teeth for such a review. The potent attraction of the trial lay precisely in the way it contained all the ingredients deployed in that staple treat for the turn- of-the-century bourgeoisie, the Well Made Play. There was a dashing young hero with Bohemian, artistic leanings – Robert Wood was a designer at a glass works and a protegé of William Morris. There were 1 2 Women, Crime and Language sexual secrets and a compromising letter (a postcard, anyway) which Wood had written to the victim, Emily Dimmock, shortly before she was found with her throat cut. There was even a tantalizing whiff of the continent and the social-issue plays of Ibsen and Brieux which in censored England could only be performed in private; for Emily Dimmock, like Shaw’s Mrs Warren, had preferred prostitution to domes- tic service or slaving in a factory. This hint of subversion, however, was never allowed to predominate. The prevailing discourse in which the case was constructed endorsed the sexual doublethink of plays such as Pinero’s The Second Mrs Tanqueray, which permitted men to walk away from their sexual histories but demanded the death or humiliation of the woman with a ‘past’. Wood’s original attempt to deny that he had ever known Dimmock was constructed as a ‘natural’ attempt to cover up a young man’s peccadillo rather than a signifier of dishonesty. Forty years later Hogarth was able to step outside the ‘well-made’ con- struct to offer a cooler judgement on the ‘lies’ told by Wood, pointing out that, although probably correct, the verdict had been ideologically deter- mined by ‘the surrounding elements of prejudice which the atmosphere and temper of the epoch necessarily breed’ (1954: 214). From his account it is possible to imagine a different kind of narrative, one about the silenc- ing of women. Wood had persuaded his former lover, an artist’s model called Ruby Young, to give him an alibi. (With more verisimilitude than sensitivity he located it in the Phit-Eesi shoe shop where they used to meet.) When Young reluctantly testified to his untruth, her motives were assumed to be mercenary – the News of the World had offered a substantial reward for information – and once it became clear that she was sexually active it was not difficult for the defence to demolish her character. To avoid being attacked by the angry pro-Wood crowd Young had to erase her very identity and leave the Old Bailey disguised as a charwoman. This inscription of the values of the well made play on her body anticipate the treatment of Dimmock herself in one of the first works of imagination to spring out of the case, the so-called Camden Town Murder Series painted by Walter Sickert. Dimmock lies naked on a bed, a man (client?) beside her slumping as if ashamed. Her face is turned away, and seems almost featureless. We cannot see what she is like, what she thinks, even whether she is alive or dead. She bears silent witness not to the injustice of her fate but to the criminal status of her profession. Ninety years on Toni Morrison writes: The symbolic language that emanates from unforeseen events supplies media with the raw material from which a narrative emerges – already Introduction in Four Scenes 3 scripted, fully spectacularized and riveting in its gazeability.... Underneath the commodified story (of violence, sex, race, etc.) is a cultural one....The spectacle is the narrative, the narrative is spectacularized and both monopolise appearance and social reality. Interested only in developing itself, the spectacle is immune to correction. (1997: xvii) Morrison is discussing the trial of footballer and film star OJ Simpson for the murder of his wife, which received saturation coverage in the media (every moment could be seen on live television) and drew thousands of tourists to Los Angeles. Most could not hope to be accommodated in the public gallery, but still desired the walk-on roles of the ‘thousands on the streets’ responding to the verdict as part of the spectacle themselves.

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