Another true-crime drama about a woman accused of murder is hitting our screens, feeding into our culture’s unhelpful obsession with ‘female rage’
On 20 June 1893, in New Bedford, Massachusetts, a packed courtroom waited with bated breath for the jury to return its verdict following a gruelling double-murder trial. Against a backdrop of intense media interest, they had heard the prosecution argue that the accused had hacked to death their own parents with a hatchet, had burned their clothing to hide evidence of blood, and had done so out of hatred. The question the jury was asked to answer was simple – was Lizzie Andrew Borden guilty of murdering her father and stepmother? Jurors took just one hour to reach a decision: not guilty.
Yet, almost as soon as the trial came to an end, the mythmaking around Borden began – from fevered speculation about her motives and the infamous nursery rhyme to the many film and TV retellings of the story. The latest incarnation, Netflix’s Monster: The Lizzie Borden Story, opens with an axe-wielding Borden committing the murders, and frames the crimes around a fictionalised queer romance between her and the family’s housemaid, Bridget Sullivan.
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