Familiar felons: Gendered characterisations and narrative tropes in media representations of offending women 1905–2015

Tua Sandman

doi:10.1177/17416590211005512

Abstract

This article contends that contemporary writings on the representation of offending women provide a simplified outline of ‘available’ representations. To nuance and further complicate our understanding, this study lays bare the most salient media characterisations of women perpetrators in Swedish press. In contrast to much previous research, it covers various offence types and an extensive period of time (1905–2015) and moves away from the focus on mega-cases and cases of extreme deviance. First, the study illustrates that characterisations are contingent and that there is a greater variety in ‘available’ representations than previous research suggests. The characterisations rather tend to move between and beyond the categories of bad, mad and sad. Second, the study makes visible the narrative continuities (across cases and over time) and analyses the social and cultural work of gendered characterisations. While steering attention to sense-making and the construction of familiarity, the article complicates the assumption that women’s deviance primarily or necessarily is represented as otherness.

Highlights

‘the female offender’ is a relatively uncommon figure
The suggestion here is that the characterisations of women perpetrators or necessarily serve to construct ‘a despised Other’ but above all serve to construct familiarity; they or necessarily create sensationalism, but recognisability. This does not mean that characters and tropes are not gendered; characterisations of women perpetrators are loaded with narratives about appropriate femininity and make visible that which fits with our conception of female deviance and reasonably obscure that which does not
When moving away from mega-cases and cases of extreme deviance, it becomes rather clear that lawbreaking women are not necessarily constructed as social enemy figures, which serve to mark the boundaries of a community’s selfhood

Summary

Introduction

Highly visible in the media; as a character, ‘the female offender’ usually appears sensational and fascinating (Barnett, 2006; Collins, 2016; Davies, 2011; Easteal et al, 2015; Jewkes, 2011; Skilbrei, 2012). These are stories about women who have entered the male and masculine arena of ‘public’ crimes, and have disrupted the gendered notion of female crime; women are not expected to rob banks, engage in armed robbery or help sex murderers escape from prison As it seems, the criminal offences need to be explained by the ‘typically’ female and by familiar representations of women, mothers and girlfriends; essentially, the crimes of the foolish woman are made intelligible through allusions to romantic desire, naivety, silliness and submissiveness. Her crimes are depicted as utterly absurd, or as a mystery – as character and behaviour do not appear to add up. Certain ‘female’ qualities become highly visible and render the female offender ‘familiar’; often the tropes hint at familiar stories of the dark side of woman – and highlight cunningness, (dangerous and sexual) desire, vanity, irrationality, loss of self-control – or they lean towards the notion of non-agency, feminine weakness, helplessness and silliness

Conclusion

News reports on foreign cases