Violence Against Women in Europe and America, Part IV

Clark, on the other hand, examines the history of rape in England from 1770-1845 within a singular framework: that of rape as patriarchal oppression against women. On the one hand Clark presents a cogent argument suggesting that the emergence of the separate spheres system and of the “protection racket” of rape not only coincided with each other but crucially reinforced each other as well. On the other hand, however, Clark’s treatment of rape is rather limited by its shortness (the book is only 128 pages long) and by her exclusive reliance on the patriarchal oppression thesis in her analysis. One is left wondering whether there are other possible (albeit, if less important) explanations for the ignorance of rape by nineteenth century British society.

On this account, Walkowitz is somewhat better in that she examines discourses about a variety of sexual anxieties with the Jack the Ripper murders just being one of the more prominent examples. However, I wonder if there were other reasons for the crazes surrounding W.T. Stead’s expose of child prostitution and the Jack the Ripper murders such as the rise of the newspaper and yellow journalism. While the increased anxieties in London society and culture about the breakdown (or perceived breakdown) of gendered boundaries are still more important, it is important to recognize the economic factors that were propelling this heightened production of discourses about sexual danger.

The two articles were the most problematic of all pieces discussed in this paper. Ed Hatton presents an interesting story about the murder trial of Joel Clough, but one is left wondering how representative he was. Nor does Hatton leave the reader any way of measuring how important this 1833 trial was. Lastly, Roth presents an interesting argument for why the spousal murder rate in New Hampshire and Vermont increased so dramatically in the early to mid nineteenth century. But his central weakness, in my view, is his lack of any other possible reasons. It seems dubious to claim that shifts in the culture of drink and sociability and how this may or may not have psychologically affected poor men was the sole reason for this dramatic increase in murders. Furthermore, Roth does not show whether or not this dramatic increase is an anomaly found only in northern New England, or if it was more widespread throughout the remainder of the United States.

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