She Couldn T Have Done It Even If She Did Sparknotes

Kathryn Allamong Jacob’s “She Couldn’t Have Done It, Even if She Did,” reflects America’s history of inequality and gender stereotypes that greatly affected society’s mindsets, even when it involved murder. Lizzie Borden was an upper-class, gentile, unmarried woman who still lived with her father and stepmother at the age of thirty-two. Being an active member of her community and part of the Women’s Christian Temperance movement, she fell perfectly into her stereotypical role as a beloved daughter who, unable to devote her love to a husband, devoted her time and energy to the betterment of her community. Lizzie, being a wealthy and moral woman, could never brutally murder her father and stepmother, she was incapable of even thinking of it,

Borden in 1893 describes how gender stereotypes can influence the minds of a nation and how the public and media influence, male dominated court hearing, and refute of evidence all lead to Lizzie’s full pardon. Kathryn Jacob’s begins with background on Lizzie Borden; how she was favored by her father as the youngest daughter, how she “had evidently given up hope of marriage, but she led a more active life, centered around good works,” and how “she taught Sunday school class of Chinese children, (and) was active in the Ladies Fruit and Flower Mission, the Women’s Christian Temperance Movement, and the Good Samaritan Charity Hospital” (p.53).The Women’s Christian Temperance Movement (WCTU) was a popular social movement that focused on a “do everything policy” to fix the problems of the community, including problems deeper than just alcohol (Brady Class Lecture,2014). The WCTU was seen as a positive movement for women to maintain their womanly roles while using their moral values to better society. Regardless of the life Lizzie lived, her stepmother and father were both killed

The evidence between witnesses seeing Lizzie buy poison, washing a brown stained dress, her inconsistencies in the alibis, and her lacking of emotion all pointed to Lizzie Borden’s guilt. Jacob applied society’s outlook on an 1800’s American women as frail, feeble-minded, morally driven individuals who are incapable of a planned murder, to support her argument that Lizzie, no matter how guilty she may have been, would not be convicted of murder. Convicting Lizzie of murder meant opposing the established woman stereotypes which endangered the cohesive mindset of