The “Normal” Woman Who Kills: Representations of Women’s Intimate Partner Homicide

• Published date: 01 July 2019
• DOI: 10.1177/1557085117744876
• Date: 01 July 2019
• Subject Matter: Articles

744876FCXXXX10.1177/1557085117744876Feminist CriminologyPelvin
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Article
Feminist Criminology
2019, Vol. 14(3) 349 –370
The “Normal” Woman
© The Author(s) 2017
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Who Kills: Representations
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https://doi.org/10.1177/1557085117744876
DOI: 10.1177/1557085117744876
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of Women’s Intimate
Partner Homicide
Holly Pelvin1
Abstract
Research suggests that the representation of women’s lethal violence relies on stock
narratives that deny women’s femininity or neutralize their culpability. I test those
claims by studying media coverage of female-perpetrated intimate partner homicides
in Toronto, Canada, from 1975 to 1999. I find that the vast majority of these
homicides received little or no media coverage, which I attribute to the circumstances
surrounding “normal” killings and the characteristics of the offenders and victims
involved in them. “Normal” homicides do not necessarily disrupt or challenge our
understanding of femininity or violence, making them less newsworthy or in need of
explanation.
Keywords
female killers, media representations, intimate partner homicide
Introduction
Since Lombroso (1895) first described criminal women as physically different from
other women, criminologists have developed a deep interest in representations and
portrayals of female criminals, which now boast a long history of inquiry. Women who
kill are perhaps the most commonly studied group in this area of research, and their
crimes have spawned debates that extend beyond offending and into cultural
understandings of femininity. Media representations of women who kill tell a larger
story than the specific focus on the individual offender or case. They reflect and
1University of Alberta, Canada
Corresponding Author:
Holly Pelvin, Department of Sociology, University of Alberta, 5-21 HM Tory Building, Edmonton Alberta,
Canada, T6G 2H4.
Email: pelvin@ualberta.ca

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Feminist Criminology 14(3)
reinforce cultural notions about femininity that are widespread in a particular society
or point in time (Frigon, 2006; Jones, 2003; Seal, 2010). The combination of violence
and the feminine challenges particular understandings about acceptable femininity and
the portrayals show us some of the ways society struggles to make sense of these
apparently conflicting subjects (Farr, 2000; Morrissey, 2003; Sjoberg & Gentry, 2007).
A number of scholars have suggested that women’s violence is so out of place, so
traumatic, and so inexplicable that society is unable to “assimilate or understand the
event” (Morrissey, 2003, p. 11; Weatherby, Blanche, & Jones, 2008). To explain wom-
en’s use of violence, according to this work, the legal system and the media have cre-
ated stock discourses that provide a simple framework for classifying the killing and
the killer so that they can be understood and their power to frighten us can be neutral-
ized. In support of this argument are numerous studies of media and legal discourse on
women’s violence that point to two stock narratives: the denial of femininity in the use
of violence (i.e., the “bad” woman) and/or the neutralization of women’s responsibil-
ity (i.e., the “mad” or “sad” woman).
Much of this research has used a case study methodology and focused on high-
profile or spectacular killings (e.g., Ballinger, 1996; Birch, 1993; Jones, 2003;
Morrissey, 2003; Nagy, 2014). This work finds that female killers attract a media
frenzy in which the perpetrators are subject to myriad levels of scrutiny for their adher-
ence to or deviance from gender norms (Berrington & Honkatukia, 2002; Lloyd, 1995;
Skilbrei, 2012) and are portrayed in predictable ways (Morrissey, 2003). Despite the
media interest in high-profile cases of women who kill, women’s use of lethal violence
is rare, especially as compared with their male counterparts. In fact, the vast majority
of women who kill target a family member, most often their intimate partners
(Auerhahn, 2007; Kong & AuCoin, 2008; Kruttschnitt, 1994; Mann, 1998). However,
research on the representation of women’s lethal violence has tended to focus on
exceptional cases and those that receive widespread media attention. The result is that
“typical” instances of women’s lethal violence have received little attention from
researchers exploring if and how these women’s actions are portrayed in media.
In this study, I test the claims of previous research using all known female-perpe-
trated intimate partner homicides (IPH) in Toronto from 1975 to 1999. This article
does not challenge the existence of these narratives, but instead argues that they apply
to only a small proportion of women’s homicides, and it shows that if we look at a
more representative sample of women’s homicides, we will see two things: (a) the
existence of another type of shorthand narrative explaining women’s violence and (b)
evidence that society is not as traumatized or unable to understand women’s violence
as some of the literature suggests.
Background
Some scholars have pointed to a limited understanding of femininity in legal and
media discourse that frames the portrayal of women’s crimes (Seal, 2010; Sjoberg &
Gentry, 2007; Weare, 2013; Worrall, 1981). Such a portrayal assumes a particular view
of femininity that idealizes women as “self-sacrificing, passive, and nurturing” (Jones,

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351
2003, p. x), and as a result, women who kill are portrayed as “doubly deviant” because
they not only break the law but also violate gender norms (Easteal, Bartels, Nelson, &
Holland, 2015; Jewkes, 2009; Naylor, 2001; Wykes, 1998).
To make sense of women’s violence, legal and media discourse make use of stock
narratives that typify women’s use of violence as “mad” or “bad.” These standard nar-
ratives are adapted from popular myth which provides “a sort of compass” that helps
to “make sense of complicated events” (Barnett, 2006, p. 414) by diluting and funnel-
ing the information into an “easily digestible scenario” (Jones, 2003, p. 43). In media
discourse, a common stock narrative for crime stories is the contest between the forces
of good and evil, the righteous and the maleficent, which allows for an easy mapping
of the killing onto the narrative structure of the story (Morrissey, 2003).
Research suggests that when women kill their male partners, they may be portrayed
in both legal and media discourse only as their partners’ victims (Easteal et al., 2015;
R. Taylor, 2009), and not as women who are actively participating in self-preservation
(Morrissey, 2003). To explain these crimes, a narrative of victimization is invoked,
whereby otherwise “good” women are seen as having been driven “mad” by the abu-
sive husbands they kill (Easteal et al., 2015; Jones, 2003; Naffine, 1995). This por-
trayal rests on the argument that the woman suffered from a mental imbalance or
illness—such as battered woman syndrome (BWS)—brought on by her partner’s
abuse: rather than a rational agent acting in self-defense, she acted automatically and
without will. As a consequence, some scholars contend that battered women are denied
agency, and lose the self-determination they were trying to gain in committing the act,
by excusing rather than justifying their violence (Comack & Balfour, 2004; Lazar,
2008; Morrissey, 2003). Importantly, however, some researchers argue that this expla-
nation is conditional on the woman’s adherence to traditional notions of femininity in
accordance with their roles as mothers, wives, or otherwise “regular” people (Meloy
& Miller, 2009; Meyers, 1997). Women in unconventional relationships, for example,
may find their claims as victims or battered women open to challenge (Boyle, 2005;
Morrissey, 2003).
Media scholars suggest that the characteristics of crimes interact with other factors
to determine their news value, meaning that some types of people and some types of
crimes are more likely to be covered in the media (Chermak, 1995; Johnstone,
Hawkins, & Michener, 1994). The unusualness or shock value of a crime determines
its level of newsworthiness (Carmody, 1998; Chermak, 1995; Peelo, Francis, Soothill,
Pearson, & Ackerley, 2004) and, by extension, its placement and coverage in news-
print. Through this logic, crimes that occur in routine contexts have less news value
(Sorenson, Manz, & Berk, 1998; Sheley & Ashkins, 1981). Indeed, research has found
that media coverage of homicides tends to privilege cases involving individuals of
high socioeconomic status who are killed in particularly violent or lurid circumstances
(Johnstone et al., 1994; Sorenson et al., 1998), despite the relative rarity of these cases.
Cases involving the poor, the non-White, and “disreputable” victims and offenders
have been found to attract less attention despite their relative frequency (Johnstone
et al., 1994; Sorenson et al., 1998).

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Feminist Criminology 14(3)
Some argue that the rarity of women’s lethal violence—as compared with their male
counterparts—makes cases of women’s violence inherently more newsworthy
(Berrington & Honkatukia, 2002; Pritchard & Hughes, 1997). Others, however, con-
tend that IPH has less news value than other forms of homicide (McManus & Dorfman,
2005; Sorenson et al., 1998), because it is seen as a private event (C. A. Taylor &
Sorenson, 2002). In support of this claim, Wozniak and McCloskey (2010) compared
newspaper coverage of male- and female-perpetrated IPH from 2000 to 2003 and found
that,...