Bad, Mad or Sad? Legal Language, Narratives, and Identity Constructions of Women Who Kill their Children in England and Wales

Abstract

In this article I explore the ways in which legal language, discourses, and narratives construct new dominant identities for women who kill their children. These identities are those of the 'bad', 'mad', or 'sad' woman. Drawing upon and critiquing statutes, case law, and sentencing remarks from England and Wales, I explore how singular narrative identities emerge for the female defendants concerned. Using examples from selected cases, I highlight how the judiciary interpret legislation, use evidence, and draw upon gender stereotypes in carefully constructing macro-narratives which produce gendered identities for filicidal women, thus nullifying the challenge these women pose to appropriate femininity and the motherhood mandate. Each of the narrative identities discussed deny the agency of the female defendants that they are attached to, albeit in subtly different ways, by denying their ability to make any degree of choice in relation to their filicidal actions. Although such identity construction and agency denial may not always be damaging to these filicidal women per se, its pervasiveness within legal discourse reinforces and reproduces damaging gender stereotypes surrounding women and femininity.

Mother, Monster, Mrs, I: A Critical Evaluation of Gendered Naming Strategies in English Sentencing Remarks of Women Who Kill

“…So-called 'appropriate femininity' is based on patriarchal understandings of what it is, and should be, to be a woman. For example, the notions that women are non-violent, passive, controlled by their hormones and emotions, and primarily understood in relation to their relationships with others, especially as wives and mothers (see, for example: [38,54]).…”

“…Research has highlighted how these stereotypes around appropriate femininity have ramifications for the discursive constructions of WWK within socio-legal discourse. Indeed, the four broadly constructed socio-legal narratives that emerge in cases of WWK are those of the 'mad', 'sad', or 'bad' woman, or the woman as 'victim' [36,50,53,54]. The particular narrative which emerges in individual cases of homicidal women depends on the extent to which these women are viewed as adhering to understandings of appropriate femininity (in the case of WWK as 'mad', 'sad', or 'victims'), or deviating from it (in the case of 'bad' women).…”

“…Very little of the existing research in relation to WWK has been at the legallinguistic interface and none of it has involved the application of corpus linguistic methods to such cases. The existing scholarship has largely examined the judicial language and discourses within appeal cases, particularly those involving filicidal women (see, for example: [54]) and battered WWK their abusive partners (see, for example: [10,37]). This study casts a wider net, taking into account all cases of WWK in a given time period, to allow for an interdisciplinary, quantitatively-driven methodology.…”

“…Their low share of recorded involvement in homicides has historically resulted in women being excluded from scholarly consideration of this form of violent crime. However, a growing body of scholarship, particularly legal and criminological, has engaged with the experiences of women who kill (WWK) and their interactions with legal and criminal justice institutions (see, for example, [36,50,53,54]).…”

“…The research involves analyses of cases involving WWK in a custom-collected corpus of English Crown Court sentencing remarks, 2012-2015, where a female defendant was convicted of a homicide offence. We have chosen to specifically focus on cases involving WWK due to their relative rarity and the perceived deviance of these women in relation to understandings of appropriate femininity [53,54]. By focusing specifically on WWK-rather than taking, for example, a comparative approach involving cases of men who kill-we have been able to explore the judicial narratives surrounding these women, qua women.…”