Women. Crime & Justice

In "Historical Perspectives: From Witch Hunts to PMS," the chapter of her book "Unruly Women," Karlene Faith (1993) dwelt upon the 'images of women' within historical paradigm from witch-hunts to PMS. The scholar based her analysis on the histories of white Anglo-Saxon women from England and Canada in the period between the 15th and the 19th centuries. E. Comack (1996), in the turn, reflected over popular myths on the painful issue of women's victimization. The aforestated persistent themes in definitions of women's deviance as well as the way the 'myths about rape' reflect historical images of women and/or blame the victim are analyzed in the current paper.

It seems that both the authors claimed that society in its historical developmental perspective was permeated with gender prejudices and masculine chauvinism in regard to women.

Faith (1993) argued that due to male dominance underlying historical and modern societal institutions, such as family, community, church, economic structures, legal and juridical establishments, women were segregated from mainstream culture on the factor of their gender.

The pillars of the Western Church, St. Paul and St. Augustine, associated sex with sin (Faith 41). Society was dominated by the concept of the male God, the male-dominated socio-economic hierarchies and power relations. The very definition 'master' or 'lord,' which designated the position on the top of a social structure, was conceptualized as meaning somebody of male gender. They founded their disbelief in women on the fact that the Bible described the first woman, Lilith, as malicious enchantress (this biblical theme was developed by Catholics and Protestants, e.g. Martin Luther who called all the women witches and enchantresses - discussed in Faith 14; Lilith was later portrayed by Rosetti 1855 and etc; Faith 13), and Eve as the seducer of an innocent male in the alliance with the Devil.

The two Dominican monks, Heinrich Kramer and Jacob Sprenger, designed their famous opus 'Malleus Maleficarum' ('The Witches' Hummer' 1486) bearing in mind the concepts about "the wickedness of a woman" (Kramer and Sprenger 1486/1948: 42; qtd. in Faith 18). The list of women's characteristic strikes with passion and, at the same time, the total absence of logic: women are claimed to be "an unescapable punishment, a necessary evil, an evil of nature, painted with fair colours"; they are "more bitter than death" in memory of Eve, the temptress (Kramer and Sprenger 1486/1948: 42-44; qtd. in Faith 18). Such indignation at a creature luring in appearance and necessary for social functioning may be caused by the monks' celibate and the idea of gender split, which were beneficial for the Church in its strive to maintain authority over people's souls.

Kramer and Sprenger did not exhaust their rhetoric in the previous characteristics, to say honestly immensely gender-biased, but continued to picture women as "feebler both in mind and body" than men, first; "more carnal," second; exhibiting malice and deception in behavior, third. The first factor could explain the existing social order, so far as men has been trying to control and suppress women during the whole run of history. Economics was based on wars, conquests, robbery and violence. Law was based on physical priority. The aforesaid historically-economic necessity dictated the prevalence of physical power over familial values embodied in 'feeble' women. The reproductive function could not be performed without sexual act. In order to eliminate any positive feelings in men towards women as equal and important partners, sex started to be linked to sin, misery and malice.

The traditional dichotomy of flesh/soul was chained to misogyny. Flesh was conceptualized as the embodiment of evil. Women played the roles dependent on flesh functions (childbearing). Therefore, women were evil. However, judging by the passage from Kramer and Sprenger, the initiators of holocaust in regard to women overlooked the psychological trap of everything prohibited being luring. No one can stand the power of physical beauty and harmony. Even the religious fanatics could not deny it being present in women: they were viewed as "contaminating to the touch, and deadly to keep [but] beautiful to look upon" (ibid.). The forced resentment of women's physical beauty and sexual pleasures resulted in implicit and acid pornography permeating the works of witch hunters.

Faith pointed out sexually-based and socially-based historical images of women breaching common law in the specific conceptualizations within the periods of Middle Ages, Renaissance, Enlightenment, Industrial Revolution, Victorian and modern age.

The percent of crimes performed by women and explained by socio-economic or political reasons was relatively small up to the very end of the 18th century. The medieval representative of the Rebel-Saint female type, Jeanne d'Arc, was executed as a witch because those times' social authorities could not let people perceive her as the charismatic leader, national heroine and the unique symbiotic type of a warrior and a virgin, flesh and spirit. Faith wrote about women participating in Property Crimes (the England's Black Act of 1723), the Luddites' movement of the 19th century, the "mob" protests against high food prices.

It has been mentioned already that women were conceptualized as feebler comparing to men. However, the power of their spirit was highly appraised by contemporaries when women had to struggle for their families' health and prosperity. Women have always been playing a highly important role in maintaining family in terms of health, wealth, identity and integrity.

Faith stated that women were forced to gain support for the families through the so-called property crimes (e.g., pickpocketing, larceny and fraud) "for small, immediate gain" (Faith 35). ). Since the 16th century, women took active part in the food riots being "sensitive to shortages and prices" (Faith 38). Since the early 18th century, they assisted the male members of their families in gaining natural resources (wood, meat, etc.) from the territories overtaken by the gentry (Faith 36). In the 19th century Luddites riots, women were "the most aggressively strategic protestors" due to their "central roles in family economies" (Faith 37).

The sharp contrast between women's fragility as well as domestic assignments and their forced aggressiveness because of the overall social unfairness is seen in the description of women attacking the suppliers of food and "fill[ing] their aprons and caps with grain" (Walter and Wrightson 1984: 122; qtd.