Our Beloved Lizzie; Constructing an American Legend

Lizzie Borden is a legendary figure in American culture who, unlike some others, has not received much scholarly attention. Yet her story has generated a great number and variety of texts, and several performance pieces as well. New texts continue to be published. This body of work begs to be examined, so that insights may be gained into the interactions of popular literacies and narrative forms. The study of different textual treatments of the same subject allows us to trace issues of gender, class, family, the construction of subjectivity, and the intersections of genre, narrative and history. The theoretical approach is presented in the. introduction. It draws on a range of perspectives, from feminist, new historicist, and poststructuralist, to biography, genre, film and media, and folklore studies, and from the ideas of Mikhail Bakhtin. An attempt to see how popular texts produce social knowledge requires such an interdisciplinary approach. These theories act as lenses through which the many representations of Lizzie over a century can be viewed and analyzed for their significance. The study is genre-centered, with chapters on biographical texts, journalism, and "creative" texts such as novels, short stories, poems, plays, and a television film. Each form is described and explored for its characteristics and how it creates or recreates this legendary figure. One of the most striking features that emerges from this close reading of a century of Borden texts is their level of complexity. One might suppose that there is not much substance to Lizzie Borden, a pop culture icon immortalized in a rhyme, but the texts prove otherwise. They are marked by intertextuality; they borrow from each other, speak to each other, help to shape each other. They also construct readers, and readers construct them. Each text bears the traces of its time. In it are implicated specific cultural concerns and anxieties which tell as much (and sometimes more) about that particular society as about Lizzie Borden. Thus, the study of popular texts can be as rich and revealing as that which focuses on more conventional, canonical literary works.


INTRODUCTION
"There is that in the tidings of a murder that thrills the human heart to its depths." Hosea M. Knowlton on August 4, 1892, Lizzie Borden of Fall River allegedly took an axe, and made an enduring place for herself in American culture. She may appear to be a rather unorthodox subject for a literature dissertation. Lizzie never published any " literary" work, or anything at all, and the books written about her have not been declared "great" or included in university literature courses. Yet the time seems right to study her, in part because academic literary discourse has become more inclusive. For example, Mary Poovey argues for cultural criticism, which shifts from privileging traditional canonical literary texts to treating as significant the larger social formation which produces a variety of texts, not to mention the exclusions and repressions which mark a universal phenomenon such as "literature." Now, also, developments in theory provide useful lenses through which to view Borden texts. I will discuss my theoretical approach shortly, but first let us look briefly at the "Lizzie phenomenon." Not only does her case continue to enthrall lawyers, it also fascinates people from many walks of life. For over a 1 century, the figure of Lizzie has infiltrated numerous areas of American popular culture. Many of us learned to chant the famous rhyme, "Lizzie Borden took an axe" as children.
As recently as 1992, a piece in the New Yorker played on our familiarity with the Fall River legend to characterize the state of New York politics. It substituted Liz Holtzman for Lizzie in a paraphrase: Lizzie Holtzman took an axe.
She gave Geraldine forty whacks.
When Bobby Abrams saw what she had done, He took the axe and gave her forty-one.
The reporter attributes these lines to Senator Alphonse D'Amato (Logan 46). I suspect that her fame will outlast the politicians. Her regional popularity is immense. In Rhode Island, the popular cartoonist Don Bousquet spoofed the Elvis stamp contest held by the U.S. postal service, by presenting a choice between "good Lizzie" and "bad Lizzie" stamps. Last year, two disk jockeys on morning radio in Rhode Island did a routine with Elvis calling in about his postage stamp. He claimed to be a distant relative of Lizzie's, and confided that her stepbrother Elvis Borden had actually committed the murders, not with an axe but amphetamines. One of the most popular restaurants in Fall River is "Lizzie's," just one block north of the former Borden house on Second street. The Fall River Historical Society has embarked on a tasteful marketing campaign, to 2 sell Lizzie Borden tee shirts, mugs, calendars, and books.
Her presence is also evoked in numerous television narratives, whenever an axe murderess lurks.
These references to Lizzie act as one-dimensional markers, pointing to a more detailed and complex character.
She exists in popular novels, biographical true crime accounts, poems, short stories, and plays, and is the subject of a television movie. Even opera and ballet offer versions of this widely dispersed American legend. As a testament to the global reach of American popular culture, she is also known in Britain and Japan. A flyer from England recently came my way, announcing the appearance of "elegant monologist Gloria Wood," who performs on both sides of the Atlantic in "The Lizzie Borden Story." I did not think that performers like Miss Wood, who seems of another era, still practiced their craft, but evidently she is still in business. Perhaps the oddest manifestation is Lizzie Borden in a Japanese book of Mother Goose rhymes. Robert Flynn's bibliography contains a reproduction from the text, showing the graceful Japanese letters of the rhyme above a line drawing of a frowning woman, running and holding up a large axe. The slippages and congruencies in the cultural crossover would make an interesting study in themselves, but my focus here is almost entirely on the American scene, with a couple of inclusions from England and Canada. The key point here is the tenacious hold her figure has had on the 3 popular imagination for all these decades.
one is compelled to wonder why. After all, she was not the first woman accused of murdering members of her family .
.AXe murders were not rare occurrences in the nineteenth century. In fact, there was another axe murder in the Fall River area at the same time as the Borden murders, but it did not capture our fancy. Finding other accounts of such crimes is remarkably easy. I came upon one by chance, while looking at a New York Times microfilm reel. In the September 1, 1879 paper there is a brief account of William Engler's attack on his neighbor. Mr. Engler, insanely jealous of his 250 pound wife, let the unfortunate John Cummings have it when he suspected him of being after his beloved. The passionate Engler and scores of others have vanished into obscurity while Lizzie endures in the public sphere. I am not sure that all the reasons for this will emerge from my study, but some will be suggested.
More importantly, I will be looking at how this figure has been constructed in a variety of texts and over a number of years. I do not attempt to be comprehensive, but certainly include all the major as well as many lesser examples in my discussion. I hope to gain an understanding of how genres produce a hero/villain; how textualizations produce the public sphere, and how they are produced by it.
I am not concerned with solving the Borden murders, or arguing for Lizzie's guilt or innocence. Rather than 4 viewing the texts from one perspective only, I will draw on literary, historical, cultural, and gender studies to consider the issues that arise.
one of the initial and key questions that presents itself is the nature of the public sphere in which the Borden legend is perpetuated. The audience and its circumstances certainly have changed in the course of a century, yet the fascination with Lizzie continues. Not surprisingly, the textualizations of Lizzie bear the markings of the times in which they were generated.
Although successive texts draw on those which preceded them, they also treat the characters and events in ways that address the changing interests and concerns of audiences. A novel presenting a lesbian Lizzie hardly raises eyebrows in the 1980s, but was unthinkable in the 1930s, at least for popular consumption.
Susan Douglas points out that scholars do not have much data to work with, regarding media audiences. There is more speculative than solid information, but some of the ideas about audiences are worth considering. For example, she reiterates that one of the central presuppositions for contemporary theory "dismisses any notion of the unified subject or self." It is possible for people to assume a number of subject positions, even contradictory ones, depending on the medium and message (130). Thus, Lizzie Borden could attract fans who view her from a variety of 5 perspectives, from benign amusement to horrified fascination to outraged defense. Revulsion and attraction could reside in the same consumer.
Another crucial presupposition that Douglas cites "emphasizes the way media texts themselves, especially when viewed by subcultural groups, invite and incite oppositional, resistant readings that challenge the more hegemonic codes of popular culture " (130). From this standpoint, some members of the audience, including some of the writers on Lizzie, very likely see her as the victim of patriarchal oppression who is driven to bloody rebellion.
Others are convinced that the popular belief that she is guilty is misguided. However one approaches her, it must be emphasized that parricides do not meet with approval in our culture, and yet she is a figure we seem comfortable with.
She is our very own axe murderess with whom we are cosily familiar. My look at the various constructions of Lizzie over the years will provide, I hope, more detail about the diverse readings of this odd figure who has assumed an odd position in our consciousness.
Lizzie seems to strike an endlessly subversive chord in our culture. If she is a feminist heroine, she is hardly as morally superior as some feminists like to envision their gender. After all, she killed poor old Abby, too. If she is a vicious murderess and irredeemably evil, how do we account for her unblemished reputation and many acts of 6 generosity? If she is an innocent, loving daughter, what about the likelihood that she killed her old father as he slept? If she was guilty, why wasn't she convicted? If she embodies a critique of capitalism, why did she revel in her inherited wealth? If she was a greedy, rich woman, why was she known for her generosity? If her significance transcends her position as a citizen of Fall River, why was she such an ordinary woman, indistinguishable from the other spinsters in town? And if she was so dull and ordinary, why is she a legendary figure?
Attempts to pin her down are invariably accompanied by the collapse of traditional binary oppositions and a dizzying sense of the instability of a figure we think we know so well. Lizzie challenges boundaries in several ways, beyond the alleged act of murder. The texts about her raise questions about boundaries between literary genres-biography (fact) and fiction (imagination). They challenge the separation of "highbrow" art from mass culture, and the notion of what constitutes a proper subject of study in the academic sphere.
As we consider the diverse readings and reactions Lizzie inspires, we need to address a question implicit in the discussion of audience, that of identification. Does the audience identify with Lizzie or with her victims?
Since I have already alluded to the diversity in the audience and a paucity of data, that question cannot be 7 answered in a brief or simple way, but it is important.
Much theorizing about audiences exists in film studies, and developments there have a bearing on how we might view the audiences which turned their attention to Lizzie Borden. some influential theorists hold that identification is gender-based. Carol Clover's study of American horror films challenges this view, and entertains the "possibility that male viewers are quite prepared to identify not just with screen females, but with screen females in the horror-film world, screen females in fear and pain " (5). This runs contrary to much film theory and cultural analysis. Laura Mulvey posits a cinematic gaze "structured by male or masculine perceptions." Clover questions these assumptions about a mastering gaze (8). She disagrees that males in the audience identify only or mostly with males onscreen, and females in the audience with their counterparts onscreen (20). She makes the point that "the relation between camera point of view and the processes of viewer identification is poorly understood," and that much shifting of multiple subject and/or identificatory positions may go on (45).
These ideas about the horror film audience seem to me largely applicable or transposable to Lizzie's audience.
The legend, after all, has the trappings of a horror story.
But further, the variety of responses to Lizzie and the versions of Lizzie suggest that identification is not a matter of applying a simple formula, gender-based or 8 otherwise. There are men and women who may identify with Lizzie, and those who may identify with the victims, and some may shift from one to the other. The particular representation of Lizzie would have much to do with a reader's position, and I do not think it is easily predictable. Where does this leave us? I will make no claims to certainty, preferring to emphasize the fluidity of this question.
Although accounts of Lizzie appear in various genres, the one that stands out is biography. The most significant and influential books, by Pearson, Porter, and Lincoln, are all part of a biographical sub-genre, the true crime narrative. Biography influences all the other texts, for it is the path we all take toward Lizzie. She was, first and foremost, a real, historical person who left material traces behind. What we make of her life, however, is not as simple as this elementary fact. Biography involves more than the narrative of someone's life. As a literary form, it has provoked a variety of viewpoints and theories. In fact, Valerie Ross points out that for much of the twentieth century biography has suffered considerable repression in literary studies. The academic profession has repeatedly dismissed "biography, the feminine, and the popular--these three being nearly inextricable in 19th-century academic reception " (137-8). (They look like the three prime reasons to dismiss any study of Lizzie Borden.) Ross claims further 9 that biography "has since the formalization of departments of literature been granted no legitimate place in academic literary discourse" largely because of gender bias (156). This is changing, however. In recent years, there have been considerable interest and activity in this genre, as an outgrowth of feminist scholarship. Traditional views have been revisited and challenged. The contributions of contemporary critical theory are worth noting, as is the rather interesting situation regarding the audience for biography, which Sharon O'Brien recognizes. There is a tremendous gap between general readers and academics in terms of their expectations about biography and epistemology. Most readers expect a biography to tell the "truth" about the subject, to avoid interpretive frameworks, and to uncover the story that already exists (123-4). Not only do many consumers of texts hold this view, but also some producers. The poet Ruth Whitman, herself an academic, takes a traditional approach to biography. In an article discussing the writing of the historical persona poem, specifically her poem about Lizzie, she states her aim "to reveal the essence of a well-known historical character" (66). This presumes that this essence is stable and recoverable.
However, as O'Brien points out, developments in contemporary theory have led many critics to question not only the concept of the self "as a unified, knowable, and recoverable entity," but also the transparency of language, and even "the explanatory power of narrative " (123). This last may help to account for the tendency of these provocative ideas often to be expressed in tedious and nearly unreadable form, and of no interest to those general readers who are deeply committed to the genre in question. oavid Lodge states with refreshing irreverence that much theory is "the demonstration of a professional mastery by translating known facts into more and more arcane metalanguages." This is not all bad: reading it "sharpens the wits and tests the stamina" (Lodge 8), perhaps something akin to Old Father William arguing the law with his wife.
He further observes that "since literary criticism was virtually monopolized by the universities, it has become of all-absorbing interest to its practitioners and a matter of indifference or incomprehension to society at large " (175).
He is right, and it is a pity that this is so, because as O'Brien's discussion makes clear, theories of biography provide insights into the genre and how we read and write it. She points out the contradictory strains in traditional biographical practice where the subject's essence is conveyed, but in the form of a story, using novelistic techniques. The biographer looks to realism as a model, and the "assumptions about biography accord with those made by the readers and writers of realistic fiction." Language is seen as a reliable method of representation, the 11 chronological plot works to order reality, and the author is a narrator who can be trusted . In other words, this form of biography is not something which naturally occurs, but is the result of a particular set of beliefs about the world.
other theorists go so far as to "question the very existence of biography as a genre" because of serious questions about the nature of the self (125). O'Brien grapples with this issue, citing some attempts by others to create a genre consistent with theory, and her own suggestions for writing which avoids the unified or essential self. She envisions a feminist model which challenges the "still coherent form" of biography, without dispensing with "the pleasures of narrative " (131). I wonder if this can be accomplished. I also wonder how one can question the existence of a genre which remains immensely popular, its manifestations regularly on the best seller list. And yet, the critique of realism and of the unitary subject is necessary and even illuminating. It is crucial to my readings of the Borden texts. Any coherent analysis of writing must be grounded in some kind of theoretical framework, whether it is stated or not, and whether it is expressed gracefully or obscurely. Oddly enough, a survey of these texts, mostly traditional examples of literary genres, makes the argument against the unitary self far more effectively than an avant-garde text might.
As one reads on, one encounters different versions of Lizzie (sometimes in the same text), all said to be true. The more one finds out about her, the less one knows her. This state of affairs only begins to make sense when one questions the old assumptions about biography.
And why stop there, when history presents similar problems and is so closely related to biography? As O'Brien observes, history as well as biography has been challenged by contemporary theory in terms of its epistemological base (123). How do we even begin to think about the past--how to know it, recover it, and derive meaning from it, in the light of doubts raised about all of these points?
An approach which I find useful here is what is termed the "new historicism." This body of theory has extended beyond Renaissance studies to encompass various periods.
The fact that "much new historical analysis involves ideological unmasking that exposes the historical constructedness of ideas and beliefs" (Thomas xii) makes it a helpful guide when examining Borden texts. In terms of literary studies, new historicism interrogates representation and argues against isolation from other historical forces (xiv-xv). Rather, it emphasizes the "sociocultural field at the text's moment of production (rather than its moment of reception)" (Dimock 602). As with any school of theory, there are disagreements and divergences among its practitioners. Wai-Chee Dimock's 13 critique of new historicism includes a concern with this exclusion of the reader, and she points out that feminist new historicists "have been very attentive to the figure of the reader" (603). As my earlier discussion of audience indicates, I consider this part of the communication equation important as well. According to Dimock, there are "readers and readers •.. and, when we meditate on their points of divergence as well as their points of coincidence, when we think about their uneven genesis, conflicting identities, and different modes of reception," we will have to rethink "history" as "something less than homogeneous ... less than synchronized." Viewing history in this way allows us to see its "textuality." Not only does this mean that history cannot be recovered as a "lived totality," but it has a "sedimented, non-uniform, and therefore untotalizable texture." It is marked by "uneven velocities and shifting densities of social change" which can be placed into a single posture only "through an act of historical repression" (615). several decades of Borden texts bear this out, as social and cultural concerns influence shifting representations of Lizzie.
The textuality of history is also of paramount concern to Carroll Smith-Rosenberg, a historian whose attention to questions of class and gender is helpful. She views class beyond "its relation to production," as "a series of relationships, of culturally constructed identities." It 14 · then, "a complex exchange between economic forces and is, cultural identity," and she argues that this is a crucial element when viewing nineteenth-century Americans in class terms. other historians claim that "consensus, not class, characterized 19th century America." It seems to me that she makes a good case for class considerations, which are significant when we examine the world Lizzie Borden lived in. smith-Rosenberg singles out two myths which middleclass men used to rationalize their identity in early nineteenth-century America--"the Myth of the Common Man" and "the Cult of True Womanhood." One "denied class, the other constructed its elaborate etiquette." Their apparent opposition and actual interdependence "illustrate the ways in which difference, even contradiction, lies at the heart of class identity " (34). This is useful to keep in mind when surveying the class issues embedded in the Borden case, and the contradictory nature of so much of the case and responses to it.
For Smith-Rosenberg, words, like class, are cultural constructs, from which we create a sense of self and of agency. And society is marked by a multiplicity of "languages" rising from diverse experiences of gender and class (35). She acknowledges the influence of Bakhtin's theories here, which I will discuss further shortly. His linguistic model, a struggle between "the forces of linguistic diversity" and the need of every society for 15 "unitary language" provides the cultural historian with insights into how language "both serves and wars against the unifying forces of class cohesion " (36). So, to gain understanding of these functions, we must look at narratives. And history itself is a "narrative of narratives" (31).
Narrative is viewed by critics as a problematic form, and by general readers as anything but, when it flows smoothly. A reader uninterested in theory (a Borden fan, perhaps) might wish to dismiss all this, but a look at several tellings of Lizzie's story illustrates how questions can be raised which the discussion of narrative might illuminate. There is the question of genre and reliability. Hayden White, for example, concludes "that the writing of history has little to do with such qualities as true or false .•• and that ultimately historical writing cannot be distinguished from fiction" (Lutzeler 33). Others disagree, as do I. Kate Hamburger states that "while fiction has at its basis the so-called as-if structure, and thus proves to be pretense, illusion, and unreality, historiography always relates to actual events" (Lutzeler 34). The strong fictional slant of some of the biographical Borden texts would seem to vindicate White's view, but I cannot subscribe to it. However, it is difficult to see a neat division between fiction and historiography. Indeed, as Lutzeler says, in both areas, "narration has fallen into a state of permanent crisis" (30).
And both perspectives on narrative structure and effect have important points in common. They work to structure identity of "a generation, a nation, or a culture," and they do it with stories. "During an identity crisis society may show greater interest in historical remembering ... or demand a more fictional provision of identity." In any case, historical and literary consciousness involve past (memory), present, and future, and narration is marked by these dimensions (39).
Narrative may be in crisis from a critical standpoint, but it also enables people to cope with crisis. Amma Davis studied the reactions of people to murders in a small Texas city in 1987, and drew interesting conclusions, some of which are relevant to the Borden case. She found that the community dealt with its fears through legend and rumor, thus illustrating "the power of narrative to contextualize otherwise meaningless events" (99). People were in a state of near panic at first, which was also the case in Fall River. Then, stories emerged--cautionary stories and stories of accusation. Some involved outsider figures, a common feature of folktales and legends (102). In Fall River, mysterious strangers were spotted, and Arnold Brown recently created a whole new theory about the murders based on this premise. There is also the irony that Lizzie, very much an insider as a member of the Yankee elite, was also perceived as odd and peculiar--an outsider. In Texas, people were unnerved by the randomness of the murders, and their stories displaced these fears "to a more restricted frame, horror of domestic violence" (104), which happened in Fall River as well. In these situations, "folklore acts as the unconscious creative reaction by the collective entity of the group in response to a stressful change in its environment." It allows the monstrous experience to be identified and embodied, and the anxiety to be shared (108).
A similar process was at work in Fall River, and it continues. What we have to wonder is how much of this became transformed into historical data which authors drew on for their texts.
Another way to see this is as an example of heteroglossia, a term used by Mikhail Bakhtin for "linguistic centrifugal forces and their products." He saw the cultural world traversed by "centripetal (or 'official') and centrifugal (or 'unofficial') forces. The former seek to impose order on an essentially heterogeneous and messy world; the latter either purposefully or for no particular reason continually disrupt that order" (Morson 30). Bakhtin discusses heteroglossia as an element in stylistics of the novel, but I find his ideas have a wider application to cultural criticism. so, seen in these terms, the government and the courts and the Establishment of Fall River sought to impose their meanings on the Borden case, but the people provided several others. The "social diversity of speech types" (Bakhtin 263) and the clamor of many voices are important factors in the Borden texts which will be discussed in this study.
Another pertinent feature of Bakhtin's thought is the representation of the individual in the novel, and unfinalizability. In the epic genres, the individual is distanced, and "is a fully finished and completed being." In novelistic discourse this distance disappears, as the individual has contact with the present. This radical change was affected by folklore and "popular-comic sources," which introduced laughter into the picture. Laughter allowed the "image of man" to be investigated, exposing "the disparity between his surface and his center." "A dynamic authenticity was introduced into the image of man, dynamics of inconsistency and tension between various factors of this image; man ceased to coincide with himself, and consequently men ceased to be exhausted entirely by the plots that contain them " (34-5). This is a different and fruitful way to look at representations of character, and helps to explain why an important writer like Edmund Pearson  He also makes reference to his "extraordinary audacity" (~tudies 28). These are not traits usually associated with nineteenth-century ladies, and in fact would seem more characteristic of men, and only "heroic" men at that. While admiration may at first seem inappropriate, Wendy Lesser reminds us that "an interest in murder crucially involves the admiration of craft", of both murderer and detectives (14).
Rather than fitting the image of a brilliant fiend, Lizzie's background to commit such brutal murders is "almost unknown to criminology." An axe murderer is usually a man or "woman of base antecedents" (32). The implication is that Lizzie is different from other women, and that she might well have done it. The faceless murderer showed "considerable cunning and extraordinary audacity" (28).
When Pearson looks at her picture, he sees a "face and chin betokening strength of character" (51). He also finds her "rather eccentric" (39). These are all thoroughly subjective impressions, but take on the ring of authority in this serious account.
Then he quotes Hiram Harrington, her uncle. There was no love lost between the two. Lizzie is "not naturally emotional." "Emma is very quiet and unassuming," while Lizzie is "haughty and domineering with the stubborn will of 33 her father." She is "deeply resentful," and wanted to live in a style reflecting Andrew's wealth, so there were "constant disputes" over money. She is "sulky," with a It is quite evident that Pearson savors telling and retelling the story, even when nothing new develops from the exercise. This is a recurrent pattern. Many other authors over the years appear to take the same kind of pleasure in the narrative. I have also observed this when people get together to discuss the case. Even though they are visiting very familiar ground, they become absorbed and intense.
There is much enjoyment in the repetition of this story.
In this book, Pearson opens on a humorous note, stating that he considered leaving Lizzie out but gave it up because "of all the curious gallery of folk whose adventures I have investigated, [she] seems to have the widest attraction." He claims that people still send him news of Lizzie "in song or story," and "her devotees are many and various." His purpase here is to pass along some of their stories. He 38 also wants to share them because the "fictional" Lizzie is different from the "actual Lizzie Borden of history," (about whom precious little is known, though Pearson implies he knows her well). Since there was then a play staged starring Lillian Gish as Lizzie (Nine Pine Street), he wants to focus on the "real" Lizzie. It looks like Pearson is noticing a shift in the creation of her character, and he is trying to maintain some control. He will set us straight, he will be the "standard of truth" against whom biographies must be measured, and he will also contribute to the mythicizing, as he freely admits that some of his stories are myths. A hint of the old admiration for the skills of the murderer which we saw in his earlier books enters here, as he notes that the "deaths were shrewdly planned" (37). One wonders how he could possibly know this. Otherwise he is quite hostile to her defenders, the "two clerical busybOdies" who engaged in "sectarian activity of a pernicious character " (40), and especially to the women who took her part. They are "unintelligent feminists" (41) and "sob sisters." He holds back on insulting the more prominent ladies like Mrs. Mary Livermore, Mrs. Susan Fessenden and Miss Lucy Stone, merely calling them "militant," but this shows his discomfort with the gender issues raised by the trial. Women were not supposed to commit this kind of crime, and women were not supposed to be outspoken in defending other women, which is a task for men.
This was a public arena, where female voices were unwelcome.
The portrait of Lizzie which emerges here is sketchy.
He sees a shrewd murderess, but otherwise must content himself with showing how very ordinary and respectable she appeared. He claims to have spoken with people who knew her, and none "had any explanation of her character, or pretended to knowledge of her inner life" (85). Thus, the aura of mystery is fostered. All these approaches can be seen as actually fashioning the reader, or at least implying an ideal reader. Whether the reader is a lawyer, a housewife, a secretary or a student, the model is one who has some education and will recognize those literary references. It is one who has an interest in "human nature," and human behavior, and enjoys playing armchair detective and juror. This is a rational, moral person who can contemplate a grisly crime but would never be involved in one. This person is sophisticated, with a sense of humor and a sense of justice. As the reader learns about Lizzie in these pages, (s)he is also receiving these subtle messages.
As a crime writer/biographer Pearson, for all his talent, also appears to have serious faults, the worst being his careless way with facts and uncritical use of sources, such as Porter, who was anything but a disinterested observer. Pearson presents his books as accounts of actual crimes, not as fictional works, yet he makes unsubstantiated statements, such as those about the murderer's "coolness, resolution ..• intellectual power." This is something he could not possibly know. In More studies in Murder, he describes Lizzie as a "complacent" woman who "liked to go out with little-girl neighbors and feed the squirrels," and he makes it clear in a footnote that he refers to Victoria Lincoln. Yet in her own book, Lincoln admits that Lizzie ignored her when she tried to strike up a conversation.
Pearson was writing at a time when many of the principals in the case were still alive, providing rare opportunities for research. Even if some rebuffed him, others might well have The genre that served him so well, the true crime story, also sets up certain expectations. For one thing, th ough there was a chance that Lizzie was innocent, even pearson could not pursue this point effectively unless there was another likely suspect he could focus on. There wasn't; it appeared that she must have done it, and he needs her to be guilty so that, in a practical sense, he has all the elements of his story.
Because the genre presents itself as non-fiction, the reader is led to expect an accurate account of the facts.
As we survey the array of true crime/biographical writing about Lizzie Borden, it becomes evident that an untroubled representation of the woman and events as they actually were is an unrealizable ideal. It is possible to isolate some bare facts which no one disputes, but most of the material which renders this story so interesting is not unadorned truth but rather the result of intersecting personal concerns and social discourses. The question of truth here is a troubled one.
Not surprisingly, then, the picture Pearson leaves us with is somewhat conflicted. Lizzie is a coldblooded, brilliant killer, and a gentle spinster. He resents her; he adores her. She committed the murders; the murders are a profound mystery. She is a solidly respectable lady, thoroughly conventional and rather dull. She is utterly fascinating. He presents her to us in fragments, over the course of five books. By the end, we are no wiser about her, and no nearer to closure. This problem of binary 48 es entation was also evident at the time of the trial. re pr on the cover of Edward Radin's book is a quotation from the fi.eW York sun, June 5, 1893. Lizzie is referred to as "the most injured of innocents or the blackest of monsters." surely Pearson's study of Lizzie demonstrates the reductiveness and inadequacy of binary thinking.
As readers of non-fiction, we expect to gain a firm idea of what Lizzie was like, yet she remains elusive. It Sources." In his Preface, he singles out this case as the most fascinating in American history, even after Lizzie's 50 acquittal. He proposes to give the reading public a connected story of the whole case "from the day of the murders" to the end of the trial. He seems to be trying to impress with his objectivity--"her defense is given as freely as the case of the prosecution." It is as though he is responding to criticism he expects from her defenders that his book is one-sided. His newspaper's hostility to Lizzie was well-known.

This issue bears closer examination. The Borden case
is not only about family and law in nineteenth century Fall River; it is also about politics and class relations. Radin claims that the "bitterness" against Lizzie in Fall River is not the result of the murders but based on "caste ••• a small group against the many," marked by "long-festering resentment and frustration" (18). He accuses the Globe of being "one of the earliest practitioners of yellow journalism in this country." While the elite in the town was Republican, the Globe was Democrat, and thus Lizzie's enemy (20).
The reader, then, can expect biography in the form of chronicle or reportage, rather than a literary work.
However, the distinctions are not that simple. We are not in some transcendant realm where only "facts" are linked to produce a narrative, with no room for dispute. Porter freely uses rhetorical and literary devices, and creates a Picture of Lizzie which writers like Radin and David Kent 51 consider unfairly selective and hostile. Porter does not hesitate to embellish the "facts." The opening lines of the bOOk are hardly a plain account; rather, they are highly dramatic: "At high noon on Thursday the 4th day of August, 189 2, the cry of murder swept through the city of Fall River like a typhoon on the smooth surface of an eastern sea." These murders were "so unprecedented," but he neglects to acknowledge that murder is not uncommon, even in families.
By asserting the uniqueness and horror of these murders, "unparalleled monstrosity of the crime" (4), he contributes to the creation of a larger than life figure in the story, i.e. the accused daughter. Some of his heated prose does not even make sense, although it creates a fine effect. The killer "had wielded an axe .•• with the skill of a headsman." But wouldn't a skilled headsman have done the job in 1 or 2 neat, economical blows, rather than the repeated bashing the unfortunate victims suffered?
The sensational language intensif ies--"a veil of deepest mystery closed around the scene." Because no clues were evident at the scene, he attributes brilliance to the killer--"no more cunning plan had ever been hatched in a madman's brain." It is interesting that he uses words associated with females (cunning, hatched). Porter also quotes Mr. John Beattie, an alderman who thinks the killer could have been a woman "cunning" enough to wear protective covering and burn it quickly in the kitchen stove. Our 52 author ingenuously mentions this "simply .•• to show the trend of public opinion" (48-9). These are examples of the various rhetorical ways he implies his suspicion of Lizzie.
The murderer "could not have proceeded more swiftly nor surely had he lived in the modest edifice for years" (6).
In chapter 3, Porter describes the Borden family and gives a few details of Lizzie's background. "Her classmates say that she was rather eccentric in her manner of life, and of a retiring disposition" (23). He mentions her church work and membership in charitable organizations. Other references to her character are scattered throughout his narrative, and some are repeated for emphasis. Most notably, Porter presents Lizzie as a woman lacking the proper "natural" emotional makeup. He quotes a policeman who commented on her "remarkable nerve and self control" because she did not faint when she discovered Andrew's body (28). And when she was arrested, Lizzie "flashed a look at the Marshall, one of those queer glances which nobody has attempted to describe, except by saying that they are a part and parcel of Lizzie Borden." She was pale, but showed "little evidence of emotion in the almost stolid countenance." Then, to make sure we get the message, Porter refers to "her peculiarly unemotional nature," and adds, "though almost prostrated, she did not shed a tear" (65).
He does concede that she broke into tears that night (66), and later, in the courtroom, was "not altogether 53 unemotional" (70). But even though a couple of instances of ·ni'ne emotion are recorded, they are overshadowed by the f eJDl. frequent emphasis on her unnatural coldblooded demeanor, obviously a murderer's trait. At the preliminary trial, Lizzie showed "that wonderful nerve " (82). And later at the trial, Porter finds her emotionless demeanor unfeminine (l38). Porter was not alone in finding fault with her behavior. He quotes Mr. Knowlton, the prosecutor, who stated that the crime "was conceived in the head of a cunning, cool woman" (139), and that Lizzie was "nervy," "brave," and "cool" (296), "a woman whose courage surpassed that of any man I am talking to " (297). From this it is clear where Pearson got some of his key material and perhaps his obsessions.
Lizzie's extraordinary self-control has become part of the legend, and her defenders work hard to counter it. David Kent's recent book, Forty Wbacks, published in 1992, purports to introduce new evidence in the case which clears Lizzie, but for the most part he is concerned with refuting the character assassination begun by Porter. Kent also claims to be impartial. He does not attempt a biography, but takes pains to explain Lizzie's manner, and in the process, provides his version of Lizzie. The rehabilitated Lizzie was a woman who did have friends after the trial.
Ever kind and generous, she helped several students with college tuition, bought books for people, and was quietly 54 charitable (209). Kent admits "a pronounced reserve of bearing and coolness of demeanor," attributing it to "inner shyness," and sees nothing abnormal. Rather, she had "a positive presence" (16). Furthermore, Kent claims that porter fabricated many of his stories about Lizzie, and that the ~lobe practiced "yellow journalism" (40). He says that she did show emotion at the funeral, albeit in a low key way When Lizzie tried and failed to break it her way, another.
'd "this was the first time she ever attempted to do she sai , anything and didn't succeed " (198 Interestingly, one of the reviewers quoted is Anthony aoucher (in the New York Times Book Review), who rejoices that the book "gives back to us our most beloved murderess." Aside from echoing Pearson, his comment, while probably ironic, also indicates an affectionate attitude toward the subject which has something to do with her status as a legendary figure in popular culture.
While I do not think that Lincoln presents Lizzie as a lovable individual, she is indeed humane in her approach.
she is also a talented writer whose witty style and dry, ironic humor enhance the narrative. This may make Lizzie more appealing, simply because the reader is enjoying the text so much. Lincoln also provides psychological analyses of Lizzie's character and motives, likely to satisfy contemporary readers. This reflects the times, in that we take psychology for granted as a feature of biographical writing. Each construct of Lizzie that we examine shows the mark of the cultural concerns paramount at the time of its creation.

Lincoln opens her account by stating that "Lizzie
Borden is an American legend," and goes on to claim that she Will concentrate on the woman, not the legend (19). Her ability to do so stems from "first-hand knowledge," which Will keep her text from sliding into fiction (20). It will be an act of "witnessing." Born and raised in Fall River, Lincoln was a member of the city's Yankee elite. She makes 57 h O f the fact that she and Lizzie shared the same world, ~UC though they were a generation apart. Lincoln's family lived near Maplecroft, Lizzie's house on the hill, and they knew the aordens. This background provides her with more insights than an outsider would have, and allows her to place Lizzie in historical context. However, despite Lincoln's authoritative tone and convincing claims to authenticity, one notes that she never knew Lizzie personally, though not for want of trying. As a child, the young Victoria tried to strike up conversations when Miss Borden was out in her yard, but the lady ignored her. While Lincoln writes as though she knew Lizzie intimately, it is apparent that her imagination and narrative skills are masking a significant lack. Adding to this the fact that she used Porter and Pearson as sources, one begins to doubt the strength of the distinctions between Lizzie the woman and Lizzie the legend.
These considerations do not prevent her from providing a rich portrait of Fall River and the circumstances surrounding the case. She immediately sees the significance of having Mr. Almy and Mr. Milne among Andrew's pallbearers.
They owned the Fall River Evening News and Herald, the establishment papers. These were, not surprisingly, very supportive of Lizzie, while the Globe, owned by Democrats, was not (140). Edwin Porter worked for the latter, of course. 58 Another advantage that Lincoln claims is her gender.
As a woman, and one not too far removed from the conditions Lizzie experienced, she interprets events differently from the male students of the case. Lizzie's burning of a dress, and the possibility that she was able to hide a bloodstained dress from investigators, are examined more closely and take on a damning concreteness. Lincoln's knowledge of feminine hygiene practices with regard to menstruation in those days also serves to build the case against Lizzie in a way that the men have neglected. According to Lincoln, the wellknown fact that Lizzie was menstruating at the time of the murders would have made it easier to conceal the weapon and bloody rags in her slop pail.
Lincoln is certain that Lizzie committed the murders, but she offers an interesting new theory about the events.
First of all, from her abundant store of local knowledge she describes Lizzie's "peculiar spells" which only her acquaintances knew about. Many in this group believed that Lizzie killed while in the grip of a "spell" (24-5). After consulting a prominent physician at Johns Hopkins, Lincoln advances the theory that Lizzie suffered from epilepsy of the temporal lobe, and killed Abby during a fit (41-2). She had been wanting to poison Abby, but had been unsuccessful in obtaining the prussic acid. A pharmacist testified to her attempted purchase in court. A combination of physical factors (her spells, connected with the menstrual period) 59 and a serious financial threat (the proposed transfer of .Andrew's Swansea property), precipitated the crime (67).
Thus, Abby was dispatched in this most awkward and hideous manner.
Andrew's death, on the other hand, had never been intended, and if the poison method had worked, he would have been safe. Lincoln emphasizes that while Lizzie deeply resented her stepmother, she dearly loved her father. She did not want to kill him, but realized that if he discovered Abby's mutilated body he would know all. Lizzie desperately needed to be loved, and she killed Andrew because she could not bear to lose his love. It is this which, Lincoln believes, moves Lizzie from ordinary crime "into the realm of Aeschylus" (97). It is fair to say that Lincoln is indulging in a bit of legend building here. Also, unlike the men writing about the case, she takes more interest in the emotional ramifications.
Her sketch of Lizzie, based as it is on personal observation and insider information as well as standard research, conveys a "real" woman. However, close examination reveals the novelist at work, emphasizing certain traits through repetition, and insisting on others Which fit her "characterization" of Lizzie. For example, it is easy to accept that Lizzie liked to spend money and was very kind and generous to servants and tradesmen. This is common knowledge, and can be easily verified by people still 60 in Fall River whose ancestors worked for or did business with her. But how could Lincoln know that Lizzie was "lost in fantasy" yet "strangely deficient in imagination'' (300), or that she was "always tasteless" (265)? These qualities may explain Lizzie's remaining in Fall River in near solitary splendor after the trial, but there could be other explanations.
Rich in invention though it may be, Lincoln's text, liberally laced with observations, enables us to visualize Lizzie. In later years, Lincoln recalls her as being "tall, stocky, jowly, dressy, and unremarkable" (26). The latter point is significant, as others who remember Lizzie have indicated that she looked just like all the other old spinsters in town. Lizzie had curly hair, broad shoulders, and an "unfortunate" complexion, "coarse and sallow, it flushed to a mottled crimson" when she got excited (37).
Lincoln mentions this again later in the text. Always fashionably dressed, Lizzie loved having her picture taken by professional photographers (37). Lincoln studies these portraits carefully, and notes a big difference in the photographs taken before and after the year of the murders.
She concludes that both Lizzie's appearance and character had changed (266).
Only Lizzie's eyes never changed, and they seem to enthrall Lincoln. over and over again she refers to Lizzie's "huge, protruding, pale eyes" (158), her 61 "startlingly pale eyes" (199), eyes "hugely open" (301), "blank-eyed" (266), and so on. Lincoln remembers seeing Lizzie take her daily automobile ride, "sitting alone and staring straight before her" (310). On the one hand we have before us a completely ordinary woman who Lincoln insists is "so essentially uninteresting" (304). It should be noted that "the murder plots we remain most attracted to ••• are those which assume at least a partial identification with the murderer" (Lesser 51). Surely Lizzie's ordinariness makes her easy to identify with. On the other hand we are haunted by those large, pale, empty eyes. They set her apart, making her odd, sinister, memorable, enigmatic, a legend. This description is necessary for Lincoln's portrait of Lizzie, and shows her power as a storyteller.
Radin looked at the same pictures of Lizzie, and concluded that she had "large expressive eyes" and was not the least bit sinister (44). In the shaping of a legend, it is clear which image carries more allure.
Although Lincoln finds Lizzie's character "baffling," a mystery (32), this does not stop her from describing her in considerable detail. Lizzie was known to be "thumpingly forthright" (25), "baldly honest" (52), capable of lying only "from grim necessity" (65), and the "world's worst liar" (82), which might explain her contradictory statements at the inquest. It doesn't explain her kleptomania, which received publicity in 1897 when she was accused of stealing a 1 ·ntings on porcelain from the Tilden-Thurber store. two P . oln alludes to this problem of Lizzie's with some Linc delicacy, saying just that "until her middle years, she did odd things" (305). According to her theory, this behavior and "spells" ceased once Lizzie reached the menopause.
Lizzie was also stubborn (192), a "strong character" ( 230 ), and maintained a "distant" manner during the murder investigations (124). This "familiar stony calm" was sometimes broken by emotional display during the trial. Her supporter, Reverend Buck, called her self-control "the calm of innocence" (218). Behind this exterior was a shy person who craved attention and feared being overlooked. Lazy about her duties at home where she rarely lifted a finger, Lizzie worked hard for charities, which afforded her social recognition (38). "Both timid and competitive," she "could be a charming, kindly benefactor, but she never learned the art of being a friendly equal" (37). This strikes me as one of Lincoln's more astute observations. She implies that this may be one reason Lizzie was shunned by her peers after the acquittal. They could overlook the murders, that "private disgrace" they all wanted to paper over since they couldn't admit that one of their own was capable of such a deed. They could not forgive her pretentiously naming her new home on French street "Maplecroft," and renaming herself Lisbeth (302). (She had been christened Lizzie.) One simply did not do such things. She apparently lacked the 63 . 1 skills to see this and successfully reintegrate 6 oc1a . herself into Fall River society.
perhaps to compensate for this lack, Lizzie had an "almost pathological love for birds and animals" (58).
Indeed, she was a jealous person (57) whose "need to be loved outstripped her ability to love." Lincoln claims that all who knew Lizzie remarked on this (95). Lizzie could "never cope with rebuff, even from a child" (39). In her later, lonely years Lizzie, who loved the theatre, struck up a close friendship with the actress Nance O'Neil. This prompted some in Fall River to suspect that Lizzie was a lesbian, but Lincoln doubts it. While Lizzie was sentimental to the point of being "sickening," she was "sexually immature," and incapable of carrying on a love affair with anyone (309). For Lincoln, she was neither "important" nor "endearing" (97). While admitting that Lizzie was "justly proud of her handwriting," Lincoln finds it "bland, inhuman, and void of character" (126). In fact, she claims that Lizzie wrote "the dullest letters" and also accuses her of being "utterly uncommunicative" (301), a far cry from the brilliant conversationalist described by Hiram Harrington.

Perhaps Lincoln still resents being ignored by the elderly
Lizzie. It is more likely that she is building her case for Lizzie's ordinariness.
The "mechanical emptiness of her last years" was 64 somewhat mitigated by friendship with Miss Helen Leighton, also a friend and occasional guest of Lincoln's who was mother. Miss Leighton, an "outsider" from Boston, believed in Lizzie's innocence, and was touched that Lizzie would th e phrase "as Father always used to say." She of ten use felt that Lizzie truly missed Andrew (310). Lizzie certainly chose an unconventional way to join him. She was buried in the Borden plot in Oak Grove Cemetery, but had planned an odd funeral service. A few people were invited to the house, and then were told she had been buried privately the night before. Lizzie had insisted on black pallbearers. Then, Mrs. Turner was engaged to sing "My Ain countree," and "the startled mourners went home" (316).
One can see why, after all her research and ample description, Lincoln can state that she failed to solve "the central mystery" of Lizzie. There is so much that remains unknowable; so many actions challenge explanation. When Lincoln attempts it, we sometimes find ourselves asking, how does she know this, and questioning her sweeping statements.
Yet she has been successful in presenting a coherent if somewhat fictional portrait of Lizzie. She acknowledges that Lizzie's hatred on the fatal morning was Times. A paperback edition also appeared, bearing on the cover reference to its status as "the sensational nationwide bestseller." Radin was a reporter with experience covering murder cases and trials, and he did a respectable amount of research here. He cites both Pearson and Porter, but gives the case a fresh slant. Although he begins with the legend, he attempts to get beyond it to the "real" story and the "real" Lizzie. The real story in a nutshell is that Bridget the maid committed the murders, and Radin takes great pains to prove it. This position requires a rebuttal of Pearson. In a chapter titled "The Case Against Pearson," he expresses admiration for the man whose books provided his own "early knowledge of the Borden case." However, his admiration does not include acceptance, and he accuses Pearson of distorting the official record of the trial to support his view of Lizzie's guilt.
Radin's analysis of Porter's motives has already been discussed. His refusal to accept the popular view of Lizzie's guilt as shaped by these two writers also forces Radin to revise her image. In a chapter titled "The Unknown Lizzie," he makes a point of separating fact from myth, and pursues this throughout the book. Not only did he study the inquest and trial transcripts, but he interviewed people who knew her, and even got hold of some of her letters, which "are in the possession of family friends, a few collectors, and the Fall River Historical Society" (245).
The portrait of Lizzie which emerges here is radically different from the legend. There is a classic example of binary thinking in the leap from "bad" Lizzie to "good" Lizzie. The unattractive spinster with the blank gaze becomes a pleasant looking, petite woman with "large expressive eyes" and lovely reddish hair who, in fact, resembled many New England women (44). The icy demeanor so criticized at the trial is simply emotional restraint learned from her father (27). The eccentric, sullen loner disappears. In her place is a "normal" woman who, according to Mr. James Kirby who knew her as a boy, was "friendly and had a wonderful sense of humor" (46). She was "intensely 1 and devoted to her friends" (52), and led a ioya en tional social life. Judge Benjamin Cook recalls, "I conv ld see her at the larger functions the old families wou attended ..• she went out with young men before the murders" ( 48 ). And three years after the trial, romance may have beckoned. The Fall River News, which Radin finds credible, reported her pending engagement to a Swansea schoolteacher.
PUblicity erupted, and there was no further talk of engagement or marriage (225). There are other shifts of emphasis. Following the trial, she was not bitter; rather, many remember her kindness. While Andrew was notorious as a taker, Lizzie gave to her city, and Radin cites her record of community service to dispute the notion that she was greedy (49). She performed many quiet acts of charity. He also discovered that she "maintained cordial relations with her former teachers," and often gave them tickets for impecunious students to attend lectures and concerts. She also financed medical care for a former teacher's mother (51).
All traces of otherness are gone from this picture of Lizzie, a "nice girl •.• fun to be with •.• gentle girl" (14).
Surely such a girl was incapable of the bloody slaughter that took place at Second street. Radin concludes that the There is no evidence that Andrew had an illegitimate son.
But according to Brown, he existed and Lizzie knew he was CJUilty, as did the men who ran Fall River. They conspired 69 V er it up, and persuaded Lizzie to stand trial, to co 1 'sing to protect her. Lizzie was "innocent of murder prom but guilty of greed" (324). She kept quiet, and the sisters inherited Andrew's estate.
Brown does not focus on Lizzie's character, and the omission serves to support the popular image. He goes to somewhat ridiculous lengths to avoid the legend, but reinforces it when he emphasizes her greed. Clearly, the legend is what drew him to his bizarre line of research, and it is what he holds up to readers even as he denounces it.
It is too e~rly to know how this book will affect the popular view of Lizzie. I find it unconvincing, but have spoken with people who passionately believe it is correct.
Brown is currently feuding with several prominent Borden fans who find his theory ludicrous. One of the odder(?) and perhaps telling aspects of his work is that in a conversation he was heard to ref er to this book as "my Sullivan also provides some biographical details about Lizzie, even though his main purpose is legal analysis rather than character study. She was "no great beauty," had her "father's abrupt manner," was socially ambitious but had no gift for friendship, and had a tense relationship with her stepmother (20-3). These are all familiar points presented by those dedicated to building a negative picture of Lizzie. After the acquittal, she is described as an "unpleasant spinster" (205). And thus the legend is perpetuated.
A less scornful but very odd treatment of Lizzie emerges in Charles and Louise Samuels' The Girl in the House Qf Hate (1953). Now out of print, it appears to have had a limited distribution, and one could reasonably be amazed that any publisher would accept it. The one who did seems confused, as his note to the reader states: "It is our pleasure to keep available uncommon fiction ... this title is printed in an edition limited to 300 copies." Rather than being a fictional treatment of the case, the book consists mostly of the inquest and trial testimony, though the authors never properly cite their sources. They also quote Porter, Pearson, and Hiram Harrington. The authors occasionally interject their analysis, which can only be characterized as idiotic. The quoted testimony lends the text a serious tone which alters abruptly when they chime in. They constantly refer to the Borden residence as the "House of Hate," introducing a sensationalistic, carnival tone. Further, they insist that when Lizzie murdered her parents, she was "unconsciously doing her bit to free her sex from its traditionally 73 . t. " inferior posi ion.
She "stunned the whole male sex out of its condescension toward than a man and triumphed.
women" because she killed "better" They make the astonishing claim that "the old double standard started to disappear just abOut then," and attribute it to Lizzie. Furthermore, "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" (143).
one wonders if this is a parody. Bizarre though their conclusion may be, especially for its time, I have heard people claim that Lizzie is a feminist heroine. No one has as yet satisfactorily explained how killing one's parents makes one a feminist.
The authors also state that Lizzie was "definitely a Lesbian type," though it is doubtful that she "ever actually had love relations with another woman" (9). They offer no further discussion or evidence. The rest of the character sketch is more conventional, repeating elements of the legend. Like her father, she had "a grasping nature" and a "complete belief in her own judgment." She was "arrogant," "domineering," and had few friends. Hers was a "baffling character" (8). Like so many others who claim to know the identity of the murderer, they call this case "the all-time classic American murder mystery" (9).
In 1980 Among the biographical details are many familiar notes.
She was "like her father in many ways, stubborn, determined, and independent;" "she wanted money;" and there was much dissension in the family. The haunting eyes are duly noted. "Th ere were those who described her eyes as colorless and empty. Some would say expressionless" (11-12). The famous 75 Vl ·ew with Hiram Harrington is also anthologized. We inter a succession of texts replicating certain images, see feeding the legend. However, the interviews with others who knew Lizzie show different qualities. Here is a cultured woman, warm and kind, who was quietly generous with her money. This image appears less frequently in the literature. It can't be because this information is so difficult to find; rather, I suspect it is because more These writers are constructing a new narrative based on the old, popular one. While they argue convincingly, it should be noted that they base their proof on highly unstable sources. Another level is being added to the house of cards. This is not to imply denigration of this work.
Looking at this body of biographical writing, we can discern some interesting processes. If we think of these writers also as members of the audience, we see great variety. Recent studies of media audiences propose that the texts themselves may invite "oppositional, resistant readings that challenge the more hegemonic codes of popular culture" (Douglas 130). It has long been accepted that 78 people kill because of greed, but until recently it was unthinkable that a proper Victorian woman might kill because of incest. The women looking at the case tend to see it differently from the men. Some refuse to see the murderer as a "bad guy," and try to revise the character. Others want to be sure she was truly wicked. The fragmented, itinerant desires of audiences "produce" the critics and narratives as their own object of desire. We see the folice Gazette, a popular magazine of the 1890s (Kent sourcebook 220). To illustrate the impact of the case, one writer points out that "the New York Times informed its readers that controversy over Lizzie Borden's innocence or guilt was directly responsible for 1900 divorces" ("Bordenmania"). Writing in 1943, William Emery, who covered her trial for the New Bedford Evening Journal, looks back with fond nostalgia, certain that "news coverage of this famous and sensational event was a marvel of the age, that has never been improved upon" .
I strongly suspect that if Lizzie had been tried with little fanfare, she would be all but forgotten now. Instead, she became a household word, and even when interest in her abated and reporters moved on to new stories, the newspapers provided a rich archive for those who wanted to study the case further and publish their theories.
Examining news coverage of the Borden murders and trial would seem a straightforward exercise, but complex issues 80 arise.
Representations of Lizzie cannot be isolated from the social and economic forces which influenced the form theY took. studying Lizzie in the papers reveals more about the society in which she lived than it does about her. Most of the articles I read, besides the New York Times, appear in a bOok compiled by David Kent, who drew on clippings from forty-three newspapers, and can be said to be fairly representative of the coverage in the press. One quickly sees certain trends in the approach to Lizzie, and they are based on her gender and on the social concerns and obsessions which predominated in 1890s 'America.
It was Lizzie Borden's misfortune that she lived during a time of dramatic expansion. In the years between 1870 and 1900, the high birthrate and heavy immigration doubled the population of the United states to seventy-five million.
This affected the growth of daily newspapers, which increased sixfold, from 387 to 2,326. Subscribers increased proportionately, from 3.5 million to 15 million circulation . The growth of cities, their population, literacy, and needs were all linked to changes in American journalism {Baldasty 48-9). "News was a manufactured PrOduct in the nineteenth century ••• reflecting the financial requirements of the newspaper organization, the vision of its producers, and the day-to-day exigencies of production." There was a marked shift from politics to consumerism in the papers' economic base (8). This was the environment in 81 . h Lizzie Borden was presented to readers. Her WhlC notoriety, her image, were urban phenomena. In fact, the first report of the crime, in the Fall River Herald, does not target her but reflects the anxiety of the Yankee establishment about expanded immigration. The headline refers to "a drunken farm hand," a Portuguese, as the suspect (Kent Sourcebook 1). Obviously, they prefer to think a "foreigner" committed the atrocious deed, rather than one of their own. The Boston Advertiser does report that the family is under suspicion, but adds that some "suspicious _persons" were arrested but not suspected. Two Russian Jews passing through town and a Portuguese were "locked up simply by way of precaution" (4).
From day one the events in Fall River seem ideal news stories. However, news does not have a timeless, transcendent essence. In the late nineteenth century, "publishers and editors shaped and packaged the news to increase its marketability, and in so doing they emphasized content that was interesting, entertaining, and diverting." News not only reported the events of the day; it was "a selected account chosen for its ability to please both advertisers and readers" (Baldasty 113}.
The Fall River murders met these criteria. What could be more interesting, entertaining, and diverting than the possibility that a respectable young woman had hacked her Parents to death with an axe? It was a sensational crime le te with lurid, gruesome details which the respectable rep newspapers duly reported, with no need to embellish for effect. we can read full descriptions of the wounds, of the victims' heads being removed for autopsy, and bodies being buried without heads. The H~w Xo~k ~imes, for example, on June 14, describes Andrew's skull brought into court, and a witness demonstrating how a blow was struck, using a lawyer to stand in for the victim, as "a shudder went over the courtroom." It is all the stuff of nightmares. sensationalism, however, is not only a feature of nineteenth century journalism. It has a long history.

Mitchell Stephens traces it back to colonial days in
America, and even further back in Europe, in publications that preceded newspapers, and even back to ancient Rome. He considers sensationalism to be "rooted somehow in the nature of news," since most news ••• is intended, in part, to arouse, to excite, often--whether the subject is a political scandal or a double murder--to shock" (1-2). A glance at papers of the 1890s shows there were many murders though, and most did not get the same level of attention as the Borden case.
There was another murder in Fall River at the same time, for example, the Bertha Manchester case. Stephens finds that "the crimes that have most intrigued the readers of modern American newspapers" seem to have four characteristics in common "beyond mere heinousness"--"a woman or child as victim or suspect; a highborn or well-known victim or 83 C t· some doubt about the guilt of the suspect; and suspe , intimations of promiscuous behavior by the victim or ec t " Famous twentieth century crimes have at least susp · three of these qualities (108). Interestingly, the Borden case has the first three, and attempts were made to include the last, in the infamous Trickey-McHenry affair.
This was a hoax involving the Boston Globe. In Of course it caused a furor, sold many papers, and was highly profitable. soon thereafter, the paper was forced to print an apology, as the "evidence" was a complete fabrication .
While it might be tempting to dismiss Mr. Trickey as a bungling idiot, it would not be entirely fair. We need to 84 take into account the economies of the news business. At this time in history, newspapers saw their costs rising significantly. "Efforts to contain costs substantively influenced news gathering and processing. For reporters, space pay, job insecurity, and long working hours tilted news away from a faithful representation of events." Often the results were fabrication and exaggeration (Baldasty l45 In this case, it is clear that outright fiction was reported as fact. But facts can be slippery, as Gaye Tuchman explains. The word "fact" did not have the same meaning in 1848, "when the first American wire service was founded," as it did in 1865, 1890 or 1925. "For the early wire services, presenting facts connoted presenting information acceptable to the editorial policies of all newspapers subscribing to the service" (159). And in reparts on the Borden case, one can also question many of the "facts." When the Fall River Herald states that "hardly a person in the city does not pity her" after Lizzie's arrest (Kent Sourcebook 114), one wonders if the editor's suppart of Lizzie has anything to do with this perception. 85 It is useful to keep in mind that factual reporting incorporates cultural tropes, so it is not surprising to encounter elements of the horror story, reverence for virtuous womanhood, the sacredness of the domestic sphere, and fears of contaminating it. A woman writing for the »Pston Herald, August 6, describes Lizzie as having "a wealth of black hair" and "dark, lustrous eyes" (14-5).
Whoever she was looking at, it certainly was not Lizzie Borden but a romanticized heroine. This may have made good copy and given readers a reassuringly familiar image, but it raises doubts about the reliability of the information presented.
The fact that this reporter was emphasizing the woman's point of view in her piece raises another significant issue, that of women readers. By this time, women were a "key demographic target" for advertisers, since they managed households and spent a good deal of money. Some newspaper content was aimed directly at them (Baldasty 117), as this article illustrates. The reporter interviews Lizzie's friends, who have only the highest praise for her. They laud her "church work, her modesty of manner, unswerving sincerity, gentle forbearance and aspirations to be and do all that is best and right in life." Lizzie has "dignity and reserve," "a sensitive nature," and was so shy she did not have friends until she became involved in church work.
Another example of targeting women is the piece by Mrs. 86 Cy correspondent for the New York Herald, printed in the per , fall River Herald. She describes her tour of the Borden house, providing many details sure to interest the ladies (Kent sourcebook 145). Actually, these would seem to be of equal interest to many male readers as well. It strikes me that these articles are not so different from those written The New York Herald finds her a "masculine looking whose "voice has a peculiar guttural harshness" The journalist Joe Howard gives his impression on the first day of her trial: "her wide-apart eyes had an t Stare," "her cheeks, which are over full, hang unpleasan down below the line of the chin" which is "obstinate and stubborn" (202-4). The New York Times (June 6) observed that she "looked unusually well" in her "black brocade dress and a black lace hat." This objectification of women has long been present in our culture. Although Lizzie is on trial because of something she did, because she was an agent, albeit breaking the law, she becomes an object of our collective gaze. John Berger observes, "men act and women appear. Men look at women. Women watch themselves being looked at. This determines not only most relations between men and women but also the relation of women to themselves." The woman "turns herself into an object--and most particularly an object of vision: a sight" (47).
Even more is made of Lizzie's demeanor and conformity or lack thereof to standards of feminine behavior. It seems that when she conformed, there was approval, and her actions were a sign of innocence. When she did not, she became disturbing, moving to the realm of "other." In these terms, Lizzie did well at the funeral, according to the New York '.lim~, where "her nerves were completely unstrung, as was n by the trembling of her body" (16). Four days after sh OW the murders, the Fall River Herald quotes Pinkerton detective Hanscom, who thought "the murder looked like the work of a lunatic, while Lizzie appeared to be a levelheaded, self-possessed woman." However, she was giving way "under the great strain and excitement of the last four days," and was under a doctor's care (22-3).
Despite these occasional signs of female weakness, everyone seems obsessed with her stoicism. It can be clearly seen in a review of the trial coverage in the ~ York Times. Considered to be our newspaper of record, its fortunes were not always the best, and it was in trouble in those years. Profits were shrinking, equipment getting old, and "the panic of 1893 hit the paper hard. Aside from Lizzie's emotional state, reporters probed other aspects of her personality, not only during the "main events" but long after, when she retired from public view.
Murder gives license to do a remarkable amount of snooping into people's lives, and nineteenth and twentieth-century reporting draws from a hoary and popular tradition.
Stephens describes seventeenth century newsbooks which contain many accounts of murder in families. They "offer glimpses of the most emotional aspects of ordinary life, aspects that would not otherwise have been made public." Then and now, "the commission of a crime justifies fascinating violations of privacy" (111-2). In the Borden case, the results of the reporters' interviews and investigations are interesting and somewhat contradictory.
Lizzie's family paints a consistently unflattering picture of her. Soon after the murders, the New York Herald quotes her uncle John Morse, who states Lizzie "was a peculiar girl, often given to fits of sullenness." The article goes on to claim that she "has been odd all her life," though "she has her defenders, who say she has an amiable disposition. The allegations to the contrary may be mere ill natured gossip" (Kent sourcebook 31-2).
The harshest words come from her uncle Hiram Har · r1ngton, who was married to Andrew's only sister. The interview he gave, which was circulated widely and is  (329). Nance denied all unpleasantness, recalling her friend as a "reserved little gentlewoman" with gray eyes, and very different from the "unemotional, grim, stocky" figure in the public imagination. Lizzie was refined and intelligent, well-read and travelled, and spoke well. She was also "utterly lonely" (345).
Another friend, Helen Leighton, who was close to Lizzie and a beneficiary in her will, spoke about her shortly after Lizzie died in 1927. She evokes a woman who "could not bear to see suffering," was devoted to the welfare of animals, and helped many needy people. Lizzie was "bitterly unhappy" and suffered "days of most terrible depression," finding sma11 Pleasures in her love of theatre and reading. After 94 being shunned by her congregation she stopped attending church, but had "at least a dozen devoted friends," to whom she was very generous (340). And so even Lizzie's death did not stop reporters from searching for keys to her personality. When her will was made public, it was covered extensively, and it was revealed that she was most generous to the Animal Rescue League, relatives, friends, and servants.
Mysterious as she was, the bottom line is she was interesting and helped sell newspapers, whose writers were It is entertainment as well. It also makes a reader feel rather well-disposed toward Lizzie. On June .12 he writes that "although she had had two nights' rest and six square meals since the adjournment and had devoured with zealous interest chapter after chapter from the facile pen of the poor man's novelist, Charles Dickens, she was not in good form " (264). He could be serious and insightful in his accounts, too, and was moved by the same gender-related expectations as his colleagues. He found Lizzie "a most remarkable woman" because of her self-control, and was struck by her "unique and peculiar personality " (202-4).
Generally sympathetic to her, on the day of acquittal he observes, s e 1s no an or 1nary woman; s e 1s a puzz e psychologic" (307).
To Joe Howard she is a puzzle; to the indignant author of the Hew York Times editorial she is an innocent, "cruelly persecuted woman." Every journalist writing on this case has a hand in constructing Lizzie Borden for readers.
Questioning the representation of news is something scholars have done for some time. Critics like Tuchman have long held that "the act of making news is an act of constructing reality itself rather than a picture of reality" (12). She points out that contemporary "newsworkers find it difficult to distinguish between fact and interpretation" (99), and this can be said of the reporters in the 1890s as well.
Additionally, "through its routine practices and claims of news professionals to arbitrate knowledge and to present factual accounts, news legitimates the status quo" (14).
We see this played out in the Borden case. Even though there were some complaints about the police investigation and the conduct of the initial court hearings, they were treated by the press as the orderly, proper actions to take in the face of the chaos that the murders introduced into the life of the town. It was simply taken for granted. In 8 June 20 editorial, the New York Times praises the trial as " 8 model proceeding from the opening day," which was " conducted ably and expeditiously and kept within the limits of the proper dignity of a judicial proceeding." The conduct of the trial reaffirmed the validity of impossible to prove. It may come down to a tension between perception and imagination. We read the newspapers and form an impression. In 1893, it was predominantly favorable, and she was showered with sympathy, but this began to change fairly rapidly. We know that her person was immaculate minutes after her father's murder, and the weapon was never found. Perception dictates one image, but imagination another, and so she remains forever the lady who took an axe philosophic issues for academics to ponder, but a part of everyday life to concern all readers. In this chapter the problem will not arise in quite the same way, as I will explore the intentionally creative literature about Lizzie, in the form of novels, stories, poems, plays, and film.
Many of these writers relied on the biographical/historical texts, as one might expect, and traces of these appear in their work.
The representations of Lizzie vary widely, as does the quality of the texts. In some she emerges as a simple, onedimensional character, while in others she has depth and complexity. Some writers are interested in retelling the story, some weave it into a larger plot, and others are more taken with the implications of the case. A range of ideological positions underlies these works, from the 100 preservation of the status quo (Bierstadt, Lowndes), to feminisms (Carter, Hunter, Pollock), and the critique of capitalism (Carter).
some of these texts have attracted the attention of academics, and others are perhaps too obscure or lowbrow to interest anyone but a Borden fan. I find it fascinating that Lizzie has inspired such a literary output, ranging from kitsch to works consciously invoking the aura of "art." Distinguishing between these two poles can be problematic.
Jerry Palmer observes that our culture does draw a boundary between "high" and "low" art. One feature common to most of the texts must be noted.
In one way or another, they make a point of presenting the murders as an act of passion, a point on which the In Paris, Lizzie meets two American men. One falls in love with her friend, and the other stirs interest in her.
" Abby sees Hiram sneaking out of the barn the night before the murders, and is upset. At her age, she is aware "of certain curious and sinister facts concerning the part sex plays in the hidden lives of many women," but she hadn't thought of L~zzie in this regard (136). When they confront each other, the language is highly dramatic, and also (to me) unintentionally funny. "There was something fiercely grim in the way that Lizzie uttered that commonplace remark, and it was followed with a fierce, grim statement. 'I want you to know that I've always hated you, Mrs. B. "' (153).
Though Mrs. Lowndes was popular, I doubt she was known as an elegant stylist. But romance fans do not apply elite literary standards to their books. According to Janice Radway's study of a group of romance readers, style is not a major concern. A "well-written" story is one with a good Plot (190). Romances are characterized by repetition of the same, limited vocabulary and "overzealous assertion" which "combat ambiguity" and imply that all events are definitively comprehensible." Readers come to expect this; there is very little interpretive work for them to do (195-6)· when Lizzie is driven to murder, she actually rolls up her sleeve to kill Andrew! Interestingly, the atmosphere of horror is only evoked after the murders, when the crowd is in the street. Before then, it is calm despite the carnage.
Lizzie is not portrayed as a monster, and this is consistent with the earlier part of the book, where she is a lovesick spinster inflamed by desire, whom the readers could find sympathetic. However, once she commits the more serious transgression of parricide, distance is needed. Thus, we have the scene in the street outside her home, where "after a horror-stricken pause, there arose a long drawn out moaning sound on the stifling air" (219). The novel ends with Hiram returning to Boston. He is told Lizzie will write to him, "but she never did." And so ends her story, as a broken romance. The primacy of romance is noteworthy here. After all, this was a sensational murder case and trial, yet these aspects fade into obscurity in the face of Lizzie's passion for her unworthy suitor, and her ensuing solitude.
Several factors keep this from being a conventional romance, however. Kay Mussell writes that key assumptions of romance formulas include "female passivity in romantic relationships," and "reinforcement of domestic values" 108 (f_ §ntasy xii). Lowndes draws on standard biographical data for some of Lizzie's characteristics, so we hear echoes of real-life uncle Hiram Harrington in the description of the heroine as "self-assertive" (3), with a "masterful disposition" (2). Both Lizzie and Andrew are "haughty, determined, and bent on always getting their own way" (132).
An old friend of Lizzie's mother finds her "almost repellant ..• independent in her manner •.• a good opinion of herself," while another enjoyed Lizzie's "vitality" (74). This is not a typical passive heroine, in personality or behavior. She is aggressive with Hiram, not to mention her parents.
This story does seem to subvert "domestic values," since she kills her parents and winds up without a husband.
However, Mussell points out that one type of romantic novel is the "anti-romance," which reinforces the "assumptions of the form." Here, "the heroine behaves in such a way that she cannot be rewarded with marriage in the end." Marriage still remains desirable, and inverting the plot makes the story "a cautionary tale rather than ••. a model to be emulated" (Handbook 317). Kill your parents and lose hope of finding a husband.
One of the essential elements of the romance is "belief in the primacy of love in a woman's life" (Fantasy xii), and this is never challenged here. In fact, Mussell claims that n romances rarely challenge the social order, and they do not urge women to recognize oppression or to revolt; instead, they reinforce the value of traditional roles in a changing society" (xi). However, other critics argue for the presence of subversive potential in the genre. Radway observes that the act of reading the romance may be more significant in some ways than the text itself. It allows women to claim time for themselves, to enjoy the pleasure of relaxation and escape from the continuous demands of caring for their families (86-7). Some of the women Radway studied even said that the situations of certain heroines made at least some readers reconsider their own lives. Her group felt that their reading had helped them become more assertive (218). Rather than being mere "light stuff," the role this genre plays for its female readers is complex, affirming "love" and marriage, yet opening the door to questioning and protest.
These tensions and others are discernible in this novel. By using many of the conventions of the romance novel, Lowndes attempts to contain an unruly subject and place her in a familiar literary framework. She portrays Lizzie as physically attractive, with a "sensuous nature" (71). In the world of the romance, all women, including Lizzie, yearn for a loving husband. But she is a killer, and threatens to disrupt the configuration into which she is Placed. The novel was published in 1939, a time of Depression at home and economic collapse and fascism abroad.

110
The tension I see may be expressing a mixture of nostalgia for verities and a recognition of brutality. A desire to reaffirm traditional roles and stability shapes this retelling of the legend. While "there had always been something unusual about Lizzie Borden" (198), Lowndes tries to domesticate her, to make her comprehensible as the woman who committed a crime of passion. She may have escaped punishment from the judicial system, but her gender is subjected to another disciplinary power. In a complete reaffirmation of the status quo, Lizzie is denied love and marriage, recognized in the novel as woman's primary goal.
Many decades later, another very popular and prolific writer took up the Borden case. Evan Hunter's Lizzie (1984) has some points in common with Lowndes' novel, but is also very different, and reflects the changes in our culture.
He, too, mines the European trip for its plot potential, and emphasizes the passion of Lizzie's crime, but there the similarities end. Instead of flowery and overheated romance prose, we find a crisp, witty, and humorous style. The structure is cinematic, alternating between Europe and the izzie is much more attractive and desirable than the one 112 Portrayed in the press and legal proceedings. The contrast between Alison and Lizzie plays up their narrative functions as the archetypal experienced woman of the Old World who shocks and corrupts the innocent young creature from the New world. Lizzie is at first embarrassed by this new relationship, but she enjoys Alison, whose "corruption" extends to an unrepentant incestuous relationship with her twin brother. Eventually Lizzie comes to the realization that Alison is "her own twin" (360).
Alison has a strong feminist sensibility, and makes snide remarks about the patriarchal system. She speaks of how men control and dictate to women in society, and disparages the "myth of ideal womanhood." Her sexual adventuring is a form of rebellion, though her public image is one of married respectability. Lizzie does not at first seem rebellious, but as she identifies more with Alison, she moves toward her own rather spectacular act of rebellion.
The moment is presented dramatically. From the courtroom scene where Lizzie is found not guilty we cut back to August 4, when she kills. Lizzie is having an affair with Bridget the maid. When Abby catches them in bed together, she calls Burton, recounting the memorable summer of 1921, when she was thirteen years old, and discovered that her neighbor at the Massachusetts seashore was the elderly Miss Lizzie.
Amanda knows the famous verse, and is excited about meeting its subject. Lizzie is very gracious to the young girl, who immediately feels a sense of kinship with her. We quickly see parallels between these two. Amanda adores her father and loathes her tiresome, overweight stepmother. Her own mother died when she was an infant, as did Sarah Borden.
Even the surnames are similar. Amanda's stepmother is mysteriously murdered in the guestroom while the girl is sleeping nearby. The murder weapon is an axe. It is August ~ ' and oppressively hot. Like the man said, it's deja vu all over again. It is hardly surprising that when Amanda discovers the corpse, she turns to Lizzie. Because of her notoriety, Lizzie falls under suspicion at first, but the real suspect is William, Amanda's brother. Police detectives are, of course, hard at work on the case, but so is Lizzie, and she turns out to be a clever detective. In a dramatic scene, she wields a hatchet against the hatchetcarrying murderer, a most unpleasant woman neighbor who is after Amanda, and kills the villain.
Satterthwait draws on the historical material, shaping it to fit his story. Familiar names, such as Bowen and Medley, appear in the text. Drawing on Lincoln, he includes the possibility of Lizzie having killed Abby during a fit, but refrains from making conclusive statements about Lizzie's past. Like the actual photograph of the middle-116 aged Lizzie, Satterthwait's character wears pince-nez, and has pale, large blue eyes. In this story, however, it is her big white cat who has blank eyes, not Lizzie. She is actually quite appealing, with her silver-white hair, fine skin, dimples, and "extraordinary smile" which changes her "stern, severe face into one of great liveliness and charm" (7)(8). This is the private Lizzie whom few see. She laughs easily, and in the privacy of her home smokes cigars and practices fancy card tricks which she teaches Amanda. The woman Amanda sees is kind and strong-willed, and terribly lonely.
• She is also multi-dimensional, a woman of deep passions. Amanda sees her in a state of great unhappiness, and in a murderous rage. The possibility of her guilt is always kept open. At one point Lizzie speaks of Nance, her actress friend, whose Lady MacBeth impressed her because "she was able to make the audience feel that even monsters have depth" (203). (There is an echo of Pearson here, who compared Lizzie to Lady MacBeth.) Finally, years after this adventure, Lizzie leaves Amanda a memento in her will, and includes a six of hearts card, which in the Nikola system she taught the youngster is mnemonically connected with the mother and a hatchet.
While drawing on previous texts and the legend and the conventions of the detective novel, satterthwait has produced a fresh and successful story. cawelti points out 117 that "the power to employ stereotypical characters and situations in such a way as to breathe new life and interest into them is particularly crucial to formulaic art of high . t " quali Y· one way to revitalize a stereotype is to add "significant touches of human complexity or frailty to a stereotypical figure" (11-12), which Satterthwait does.
This is an eccentric, likeable Lizzie who saves a young girl and sees justice done, but she is also a woman dressed in mourning, for a past filled with death and unexplained sorrow.
The fundamental ambiguity which Lizzie embodies gives the novel an edge. Jim Collins writes that some theorists of popular culture see detective fiction as repressive. In its process of resolution it asserts the centrality of the State and the status quo (28). He rightly disputes this view, claiming that there are discursive alternatives and that power can be located in more than one source. In The latest novel based on the legend, Elizabeth Engstrom's Lizzie , also plays on subversive elements, although it is easy to overlook them because of Engstrom's breathtaking incompetence as a writer. She is so stunningly bad, one is tempted to dismiss the whole business out of hand. After the gory murder of Andrew, rendered in self-consciously artsy prose, Lizzie, who is presented (confusingly) as being in two places simultaneously, stands horrified in the barn: Pear juice covered her hands, and rivulets had run Emma is bitter and jealous. They could all be on "Oprah." so far, this is a credible, if unpleasant picture, but then Emma is portrayed as a secret drunk who goes off to New This also looks like an "affirmation," which in "New Age metaphysics is a statement spoken in the present tense about a condition which the person making the statement hopes will become true in the near future." It is related to prayer.
For spiritualists and theosophists, affirmations coupled with creative visualization brings the ideal from the astral to the material realm. "In their strongest form, affirmations become decrees, in which one demands that the universe produce the desired object or reality" ("Affirmations"). Some of the strange later developments in the story, such as Lizzie being in two places at once, might Well be a macabre use of visualization.
In keeping with the Pathways model, Lizzie is shown to 122 already have a dislocated sense of self. She sees herself doing odd things that she doesn't always remember, such as stealing from Abby. This trance-like state echoes Victoria Lincoln's theory about Lizzie's "spells." But Engstrom takes it to surreal lengths where Lizzie sends a self out on a walk, and Emma sees it. Surrealistic elements can be effective, as they are in Angela Carter's story, but they fall flat here, perhaps because they are related to visualization and not conveyed effectively. Emma also has periods when she is "gone away from herself," when she is drinking and experiencing loss of control. This relates to Pathways, which is about control. It is seen as an impetus to be independent and self-reliant, to release repressed emotions. There is an implication that it is a corrupting feminist work which attempts to undermine the status quo.
Lizzie takes it very seriously, and begins a process of relaxing her inhibitions. She has a lesbian affair with an old school friend. Then she falls in love with the woman who is Andrew's mistress, though Lizzie does not know this.
As she gives free rein to her sexuality and emotions, we see that Pathways is leading her to trouble. Wilhelm Reich, whose work is respected by New Agers, "argued that repressed sexuality was the root cause not only of individual ills, but also of the systemic social dysfunctions that have Plagued Western Civilization" ("Reich, Wilhelm"). Lizzie's "liberation" does not lead her out of dysfunction, but further into it. After her crime, the "architect" of her future is quick to say, "It was not my fault " (338).
When the time for murder approaches, the anger raging within her becomes stronger. Her selves split, and she is simultaneously in the barn masturbating and in the house, bashing away at Abby with the axe. Passion and rage are unleashed in a fatal combination, and it is not a pretty scene: Lizzie pounded herself as she imagined pounding Abby, the thrusts to herself more and more brutal. Readers have a part .in re-creating this event, and Carter makes that role unavoidable and concrete.
She "takes apart the accepted morality tales that constitute the sacred cow called History, and exposes, through her own manipulation of them, the cultural conventions that shape our view of the past" (Krauss 15).
Her story shows "the multiplicity of readings (and tellings) that fit any historical event " (16). This Lizzie will murder because her life is empty; because she is filled with the passion of sexuality and capitalist acquisition; because she has strange spells; because she must break out of this house where every door is locked. It is no coincidence that Jordan detects a movement in carter's work against the Enlightenment world of Locke, where "ideas are derived simply from sense-perception," a world of "locks, cages, and fixities " (125). This is a world Lizzie shatters.
It seems to me that carter's goal is similar to the new historicists'. However, rather than dividing her text into historical anecdote and discussion of a literary text as some do, she collapses these into each other. Her story is anecdote, literary text, and interpretive process, allowing her to reexamine a set of cultural givens. Joel Fineman sees the function of the anecdote as opening and destabilizing "the context of a larger historical narrative that can be seduced by the opening anecdote" (Hart Ariel 98 However much a victim Lizzie may be, in this play she is also a killer, and the issue of moral responsibility is raised. She is frequently asked, "Lizzie, did you?" and avoids answering because this play is about so much more than that. I think the audience does want to know the answer, and the Actress expresses its feelings when she Aren't we more than just a group of "innocent bystanders?" Lizzie has been acted upon by powerful social forces.
She has been infected with the materialism of her society and the violence of her home. Her actions did not take place in a vacuum. Whether these factors alleviate her guilt is a question Pollock proposes but does not resolve.
She shows that viewing Lizzie as an autonomous actor in this drama is too simplistic. However, Miner overstates the case when she claims that these characters "do not author their own meanings and actions." (Later she says Lizzie authors herself as "other.") She implies that patriarchal society and not Lizzie is responsible. This takes victimization too far. One wonders why all women then were not swinging axes 154 at fathers who oppressed them, and why stop with fathers?
The fact remains that few women took such drastic action.
Many women in the nineteenth century did work very hard to change and improve the social and political situation of women, but changing the system, while more significant, lacks the punch of parricide. The question of responsibility raised in the play is left to each of us to determine, and Pollock deserves credit for raising it effectively. Rather than concentrating only on the murders and whether Lizzie did them, Pollock goes beyond producing a shudder to provoking thought, exploring key ideological issues of our time, and relating them to our past. At a dramatic moment we see Lizzie wielding her prize.
In the courtroom scene near the end, just before the jury announces its verdict, there is a flashback to August 4. We see Lizzie undress completely before each murder, and then wash away the blood. The point of view shifts here, as the camera follows Lizzie, allowing us to see her, and then becomes her eyes, so that spectators are drawn to join her in her gruesome acts. Each time, she gets the attention of her victim and then strikes. It is a sadistic touch.
Because of network standards, the viewer does not see much nudity, of course, and is spared the full bloody horror of the murders. Still, the effect is powerful, and the camera positions raise questions about the viewer's perspective and identification with characters.
First, one wonders if any viewers would tend to identify with Lizzie. The narrative presents a deeply troubled and frustrated woman who is a victim of patriarchal society. As an adult, her family oppresses her. Other flashbacks show trauma in childhood as well. When Andrew was working as a mortician, little Lizzie saw him preparing a corpse. He forced her to touch it, and the terrified child accidentally pulled a tube out of the body, splashing blood around, and on herself. Her screams resonate into her adulthood. The pattern of flashbacks--to the childhood scene, to family quarrels, to the murders--implies a 157 connection. This is a victim acting out her rage, which was nurtured in the bosom of her family. Like the zombies in Night of the Living Dead, she does not "stand for a threat to social order from without." She is "directly animated and possessed" by the forces that produce the social order (Shaviro 86). It seems likely to me that some viewers could indeed identify with her.
However, the film also takes pains to show her otherness. When Emma comforts Lizzie, she tells her she is "special." This is not subtle, and seems to be a code word for strangeness. There are several points in the film where Lizzie gets a sinister look on her face, and maintains an ominous and mysterious silence. surely these moments create distance, so that if one felt some connection or sympathy, it is severed here. This is characteristic of the ambivalence in the story. Lizzie killed her father, but loved him, too. We see her sneaking downstairs at night to kiss his corpse as it rests in the family home the night after the murders. Early on, Emma asks, "Lizzie, did you kill Father?" Lizzie denies it. Then, at the end, Emma says she will ask only once more and never again. This is right after the trial, and Lizzie does not answer. She is caught in a freeze frame, while in the background children's voices sing the famous rhyme. The ambivalence she embodies suggests not only our feelings about family, but also the tantalizing, almost childlike dream of getting away with 158 murder.

So far we have only considered identification with
Lizzie. Some might identify with Abby and/or Andrew, and be alienated from Lizzie. To assume that women will identify with Lizzie or Abby, and men with Andrew is simplistic. I have already referred elsewhere to Carol Clover's questioning of assumptions about gender and identification.
She states that usually "angry displays of force" are male, and "abject terror" is female (51). So if we follow that formula, men would identify with Lizzie, whose aggressive act makes her masculine. Clover reminds us that "the idea that appearance and behavior do not necessarily indicate sex--indeed, can misindicate sex--is predicated on the understanding that sex is one thing and gender another; in practice, that sex is life, a less-than-interesting given, but that gender is theater" (58). The issue of identification gets complicated, and even more so when we deal with Lizzie, who is both masculine/dangerous and feminine/terrified in this film, which contains elements of the family melodrama, slasher, and horror genres.
In his writing about horror films, Steven Shaviro suggests a rather different way to think about the contradictory positions of both Lizzie and the viewer. He observes that cinematic pleasure "can just as well be linked to the destruction of identification and objectification, to the undermining of subjective stability" (42). In fact, "cinema's greatest power may be its ability to evacuate meanings and identities, to proliferate resemblances without sense or origin" (254). By now, even though a historical Lizzie once existed, the representations we see have been cut loose from the source. She is an unstable character in the film, both murderer and victim, ordinary and "special." That has interesting implications for the viewer. Her When I began this project, I did not know where it would take me, even though I started with some assumptions.
While I had my suspicions that the "real" Lizzie is unrecoverable, I found more, and more interesting Lizzies  The evidence showed that Abby Borden faced her murderer.
Could Lizzie really have stood over her elderly stepmother and planted the axe in her head? Was she so damaged by her family that she exploded in violent anger? Was she cruel and wicked? Many references to the murderer stress the monstrousness of the act, placing it in the realm of the "inhuman." Some of the comments about Lizzie's eyes also imply some inhuman quality. This seems to me a mistaken view. Everything humans do is "human," from the kindest to the cruelest acts. This terrifying and wonderful range is one of the things that makes humans so interesting, and the figures who stand at the ends of the spectrum tend to capture our imagination, finding their way into stories and legend. Lizzie is extreme, but she is also an ordinary human. She gives the lie to romanticized notions of what it means to be human, and invites us to look unflinchingly at the question, much as she gazes back at us in the wellknown photographs. Her story is the stuff of literature, whether it is popular or of a grander sort. She is a discursive space where we face fears and fantasies, and escape to safety. As we create her anew, we interrogate the past and incorporate pieces of it into the present. We recontextualize her to meet our current needs. She is not