Borden Family Values
A previous version of this essay was published in The Lizzie Borden Quarterly.
In many ways, the family in which America’s most famous alleged – but not proven! — parricide took place was an exemplar of what our contemporary politics calls “family values.” Thus, it is fitting, rather than ironic, that the National Review celebrated the centennial of the case with a cover story.
The Borden family had one provider, a male who was the unquestioned head of the household. Although far from the norm, it was possible for unmarried women to work in those days, as schoolteachers for example (a job which might have suited Sunday School teacher Lizzie), but the Bordens were content with a single-earner family.
It has been widely believed that the family suffered under Andrew Borden’s reign of tyrannical stinginess. Edmund Pearson, Victoria Lincoln, and many other writers on the case have depicted of Mr. Borden as a miser.
However, a fresh appraisal, together with modern research, gives the lie to the legend of Andrew Borden-the-tightwad. First, there is the presence of Bridget Sullivan to consider. A stingy man in a medium size house with a family three women of three women would hardly have hired a full-time, live-in maid to lighten their load!
Only a couple of years before the slayings, Lizzie took a trip to Europe — financed by her father.
It is still repeated that the Bordens, unlike other families of their income strata, lacked indoor plumbing due to Andrew Borden’s hysterical stinginess. But as was shown in the July 1997 issue of the Lizzie Borden Quarterly, this is simply false and Andrew Borden had plumbing installed “not six months after the convenience was first made available to the residents of Fall River.”
Thus, Andrew Borden must be considered a reasonably indulgent husband and father rather than the monstrous miser of myth. Indeed, in this writer’s opinion, Andrew Borden has been a victim of misandry. The tradition that emphasizes the nastiness of men led commentators on the case to exaggerate his defects and obscure his numerous virtues.
Emma and Lizzie continued living in the family home after reaching adulthood. While it is remotely possible that Lizzie may have had beaus, both sisters appear to have been models of sexual propriety. While many observers have posited a sexual motive for the murders, such rumors are suspicions only, based on little or no factual evidence — and the most famous one of Lizzie’s time, was demonstrably false. In the Trickey-McHenry affair, The Boston Globe published the story that the Borden parricide was triggered by a Lizzie “in trouble” and about to get kicked out of the house because of her out-of-wedlock pregnancy. However, the same paper was obliged to print a retraction and apology to the “inhuman reflection upon [Miss Lizzie's] honor as a woman” when they discovered that the salacious tale had no truthful basis whatsoever. Many conservatives are indeed nostalgic for a day when a woman’s sexual purity was taken so seriously that a false attack on it would occasion the foregoing apology.
Loyalty is a family value that the Bordens exemplified. Lizzie, unlike many suspects claiming to be innocent, never “hedged her bets” by suggesting, even subtly, that her alleged victims deserved their fate. She admitted to disagreements within the family (who could deny that their family has had differences of opinion?) but did not publicly criticize the conduct of her father or stepmother.
Emma loyally testified for her sister at trial, continued living with her sister for years after Lizzie’s acquittal and, even after they had parted, maintained her unshaken belief in her sister’s innocence. In the only interview she ever gave, Emma stated, “as for [Lizzie] being guilty, I say ‘No,’ and decidedly ‘no.’” Emma elaborated that Lizzie had many times “reiterated her protest of innocence” and pointed out that “the authorities never found the axe or whatever implement it was that figured in the killing. Lizzie, if she had done the deed, could never have hidden the instrument of death so that the police could not find it. There was no hiding place in the old house that would serve for effectual concealment. Neither did she have the time.” Emma went on to praise Lizzie’s love of animals and claim that “any person with a heart like that could never have committed the awful act for which Lizzie was tried and of which she was acquitted.”
Finally, the Bordens were strong on family privacy. Prior to the trial, Lizzie gave one interview in which she discussed why she impressed many people as cold. It was the result, she suggested, of a lifetime spent cultivating a public restraint that contrasts so sharply to the let-it-all-hang-out ideology of our era. “They say I don’t show my grief,” Miss Lizzie said, “Certainly I don’t in public. I never did reveal my feelings, and I cannot change my nature now. They say I don’t cry. They should see me when I am alone.”
After the trial, Emma gave only the one interview this article quoted from and that late in life; Lizbeth, none. As Thomas Sowell noted in Commentary, families are traditionally not supposed to show their wounds to one and all, but maintain an appropriate reserve – -and the Bordens never volunteered the smallest piece of dirty laundry for public inspection. This preeminent Borden trait is why National Review’s Florence King said that, in this age, Miss Lizzie would be “the phantom of the Oprah.”
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Stumble It!
October 30th, 2006 at 6:29 pm
D.N – “In many ways, the family in which America’s most famous alleged – but not proven! —parricide took place was an exemplar of what our contemporary politics calls ‘family values’.”
Was your point only that families can be tyranical systems?
Or that “contemporary politics” are somehow linked to this syndrome?
You don’t say…
Are you implying that the “normal” traditional family unit can be pathological?
What, precisely, is the punchline to your essay?