[August 4th
marks the 125th
anniversary of the day that Lizzie Borden may or may not have taken an axe
and given her (step)mother
forty whacks and her father forty-one (more on that crucial ambiguity in
Friday’s post). So this week I’ll AmericanStudy five histories or stories of
deeply troubled children, leading up to a special weekend post on two children
who are anything but!]
On what we’ll
never know about the famous crime, and what it can help us understand
nonetheless.
Barring some
miraculous recovery of new historical evidence, the simple truth of the matter
is that we will never know for sure whether Lizzie
Borden killed her stepmother Abby Gray Borden and father Andrew Jackson
Borden in their Fall River (Massachusetts)
home on the morning of August 4th, 1892. Despite being the first
to discover and report their murders, Lizzie was the police’s prime suspect in
the crime and was indicted by a grand jury in December 1892; yet after a 15-day trial in New Bedford in
June 1893, she was acquitted on all charges. The Commonwealth never charged
anyone else with the crime, and so despite a range of
subsequent theories Lizzie remained the prime suspect for the rest of her
life (which she chose to live out in Fall River, despite significant ostracism
from that community). She has been likewise portrayed as the killer in numerous
popular culture texts, such as the famous nursery rhyme, a
2014 Lifetime movie
starring Christina Ricci as Lizzie, and (apparently) the upcoming theatrical film Lizzie starring Chloë Sevigny as
Lizzie (and featuring Kristen Stewart as the family’s maid Bridget Sullivan,
with whom Sevigny’s Lizzie is having a lesbian affair in a melodramatic
version of one of the many theories about the crime).
While its
fundamental mystery will likely remain forever uncertain, however, there are
some aspects of the Lizzie Borden case that are quite clear. For one thing, the
immediate
and ongoing public and nationwide fascination with the crime should put to
rest any ideas that Americans have become more morbid or driven by
sensationalism in recent years. Indeed, one of the first blockbuster stories in
the 19th century’s newspaper boom was the 1836 murder of
Helen Jewett, a New York City prostitute whose accused killer (19
year old Richard Robinson) was also acquitted but remained a prime suspect.
In truth, as I argued in Monday’s post on the Menéndez brothers, it is simply
the technology and media that have changed over the years, rather than the
morbid fascination; the small number of daily newspapers in 1836 gave way to
the tabloid,
yellow journalism of Borden’s 1892 era, and then to the Court TV coverage
of the Menéndez case a century later (with many stages in between, of course). Each
of these cases has particular contexts all its own, but I’m not sure that those
contexts matter much for the public fascination—as long as we’ve got a grisly
killing and the heated trial of a controversial accused murderer, we can’t seem
to read or watch enough about the case. Perhaps that’s something in America’s
violent nature, or perhaps it’s just human nature; but Lizzie reminds us of
it in any case.
A second, less
well known aspect of Lizzie Borden’s case interconnects with that public fascination,
and has its own echoes down into our present moment. In the aftermath of her
acquittal, Lizzie and her sister Emma became wealthy celebrities; using their
inheritance from their father’s and stepmother’s estates, the sisters moved
into a large
house in Fall River’s elite “Hill” district. Lizzie named the house, which
featured live-in maids, a housekeeper, and a coachman, Maplecroft, and the
sisters hosted parties there for local elites and celebrities such as the silent film
actress Nance O’Neil. All of that was of course entirely within Lizzie and
Emma’s rights, but it nonetheless foreshadows the many subsequent American figures
who became famous
and even wealthy due to crimes (accused or convicted). This too seems an
inescapable part or at least direct effect, of the American fascination with
true crime: alleged but acquitted famous murderers like Lizzie are unlikely to
ever have a normal life again, but quite likely to achieve a new level of
prominence as a result of their controversial fame. The nursery rhyme and films
might all portray Lizzie as the killer, that is, but they also have reflected
(and helped extend) her celebrity status.
Special post
this weekend,
Ben
PS. What do you
think? Other histories or stories you’d highlight?
OJ fits well for this theme of celebrity.
ReplyDeleteOf course, the context for this more-recent case includes issues of race, as the Borden events did not, but with the recent parole decision it's of interest to see the continued draw of true crime intersected with celebrity.