MAPACA

Mid-Atlantic Popular &
American Culture Association

In Thomas Hardy’s Tess of the D’Urbervilles, Tess is named as “maidy,” “coz,” and “my pretty” throughout—despite her constant insistence that she be called by her name. That is, until she murders Alec; the last pages of the novel call her an “abhorrence,” “witch,” and “monster.” Her crime is brutal; she stabs him through the heart with a knife, a phallic symbol where she can turn the tables and metaphorically rape him in return for his sexual abuse of her years prior. Hardy’s language, as well as the reception of the novel, make it clear that murderesses are “unnatural,” whereas men who commit crimes are generally accepted systemically of being capable of enacting violence. 19th-century novels and non-fiction perpetuated this masculinity of murder, a turn from the 18th-century women criminals of the Newgate narratives. This mindset and rhetoric has persisted to modern-day; Aileen Wuornos is “Monster” and women who kill are either masculinized abnormalities or explained away as “jilted lovers,” not in control of their passions. The stereotypes of women who kill are sensationalized throughout the true crime genre, focusing not on the crimes or capabilities of women, or even the number of women who really do enact violence; rather, each time a woman makes headlines for murder, she is showcased as a rare anomaly, or vilified as a threat and as the anti-woman. These expectations of female criminality greatly undermine the capabilities of women and strip them of their personhood, which creates a sense of removal from reality, enforcing fictitious perspectives such as in Hardy’s novels.

This is part of a work-in-progress dissertation chapter on gender, rhetoric, and criminality in Tess of the D’Urbervilles and the perpetuating ways we frame conversations about women criminals in modern day.