In researching “Denise Noe’s Lizzie Whittlings,†my regular column in “The Hatchet: The Journal of Lizzie Borden Studies,†I recently purchased a book about the case called “The Girl in the House of Hate†by Charles and Louise Samuels. It was originally published in 1953, something that shows in the title. Like those writing about the case when it broke in 1892, the Samuels call a 32-year-old woman a “girl.â€ÂÂ
And like too many writing on the case during any time period, the authors see implications in it that aren’t there. They write that, “when Lizzie murdered her parents – and that she did kill them there now seems no longer much doubt — she was unconsciously doing her bit to free her sex from its traditionally inferior position.â€ÂÂ
This statement is wildly wrong on several counts. First, it is by no means a certainty that Lizzie Borden killed her stepmother and father. The reason that the case haunts the world is that there are good reasons to believe she did and equally good reasons to believe that she did not.
The Samuels also accept the general perception of women as having occupied a “traditionally inferior position†when the more complicated truth is that each sex had areas in which it was favored and areas in which it was discriminated against.
Furthermore, even if one assumes Lizzie Borden’s guilt of this brutal double slaying, to see her as, even unconsciously, motivated by a desire to uplift women is grotesque. Her first victim would have been a woman and coming up to another woman from behind and brutally hacking her to death is hardly an act of “sisterhood.†Nor could the slaying of Andrew Borden have done anything to “free her sex from its traditionally inferior position†since he was not a man dedicated to oppressing or restricting women but one who worked hard so that the women in his life could enjoy the freedom of leisure. He was a private individual, not politically active, and not working to oppose suffrage or the expansion of educational or employment opportunities for females.
Charles and Louise Samuels postulate that the situation of women began to slowly change in the years after the Borden slayings. However, the truth is that the first wave of the feminism, known then as the suffrage movement, had been active for many years prior to them. But the Samuelses believe “that when Lizzie swung her ax, she stunned the whole male sex out of its condescension toward women. Lizzie had shown that she could kill better and more cruelly than any man – and get away with it.â€ÂÂ
Even if guilty, Lizzie had shown no such thing. Women were known to commit murder long before 1892 and to perpetrate some very nasty killings.
Many people have suggested that her “getting away with it†was partly due to sexist prejudice working in her favor as America during the period may have been less disposed to believe the worst of women but such prejudice shows that the female sex was not in a “traditionally inferior position†in all respects but in a traditionally superior position in some important ways.
The authors assert that “the old double standard started to disappear just about†the time after the slayings. I think it may be the case that the particular double standard to which they are probably referring, that which held women to a stricter standard in heterosexual relationships than men, might have begun to lighten in the 1920s but that was quite awhile after the Borden murders and there is no reason to believe there was the slightest connection.
Finally, Charles and Louise Samuels proclaim, “If today woman has come out of the kitchen, she is only following Lizzie, who came out of it with a bloody ax and helped start the rights-for-women bandwagon rolling.â€ÂÂ
Lizzie could not “start the rights-for-women bandwagon rolling†as Mary Wollstonecroft, Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and several others had already done that. Lizzie was not a leader in any political or social area.
Women as a sex could not follow Lizzie out of the kitchen because Lizzie was never in it. That was thanks to her father, Andrew Borden. Despite his reputation for penny-pinching, this man who supported three women was willing to employ domestic help. Kitchen duties in the Borden household were divided between maid Bridget Sullivan and stepmother Abby Borden.
In the 1970s, the second wave of the feminist movement popularized the saying, “The personal is political.†Although the Samuelses wrote before that saying became commonplace, they seem to have shared its vision. However, the truth is that there are times when the personal is simply personal. IF Lizzie Borden did indeed slaughter her stepmother and father, her reasons were private animus or a greed that led her to brutally speed up her inheritance. The killings of Abby and Andrew Borden had neither a political agenda nor political effects.
