Introduction: Women, Murder and Femininity

Abstract

This book provides a feminist reading of gender representations of women who commit, or are accused of, ‘unusual’ murders.¹ All types of murder by women are relatively unusual, but when women do kill, the victims are most likely to be their own children or a male partner (Ballinger, 2000; Frigon, 2006). Other sorts of killing by women are rare and arguably have the potential to be even more shocking. Illustrative cases that have figured prominently in the popular imagination include those of Myra Hindley and Aileen Wuornos. Myra Hindley, along with her boyfriend, Ian Brady, participated in the murders of five young people in Manchester, Britain, in the 1960s (Birch, 1993; Storrs, 2004). Aileen Wuornos shot dead seven men she solicited as a sex worker on a Florida highway in the late 1980s and early 1990s (Shipley and Arrigo, 2004; Pearson, 2007). The ‘unusualness’ of these cases and their distance from more ‘explainable’ types of murder by women help to explain their notoriety.