Often glossing over the facts of the case, newspaper accounts presented the events according to stereotypes that were remarkably similar to those found in well-known murdered-girl ballads, such as "Pretty Polly," "Omie Wise," and "The Jealous Lover." Events, characters, motivations, and plot were presented through this framework: the simple country girl led astray by a clever degenerate. Nearly all variants of the Pearl Bryan ballad point the same moral:
Young ladies now take warning Young men are so unjust, It may be your best lover But you know not whom to trust.
Representations of this formula appear in such diverse genres as the ballad "Poor Ellen Smith" and the novel An American Tragedy.
As Anne Cohen demonstrates, both newspaper accounts and ballads tell the Pearl Bryan story from the same moral stance, express the same interpretation of character, and are interested in the same details. Both distort facts to accommodate a shared pattern of storytelling. This pattern consists of a plot formulathe murdered-girl formulathat is accompanied by stereotyped scenes, actors, and phrases. The headless bodysurely the most striking element in the Pearl Bryan caseis absent from those ballads that have survived. Anne Cohen contends that a decapitated heroine does not belong to the formulaa murdered heroine, yes, but not a decapitated one. Similarly, newspapers made much of Pearl's "innocence" and tended to downplay the second murderer. Only one murderer, the lover, belongs to the stereotype.
Poor Pearl, Poor Girl! is a ballad study conducted on historic- geographic lines; that is, it seeks to trace the history and interrelations of a series of ballad texts and to relate the ballads directly to their ideological and historical context in the American scene. It also compares the narrative techniques of ballad composition with the techniques of other forms of popular narrative, especially newspaper journalism.
Often glossing over the facts of the case, newspaper accounts presented the events according to stereotypes that were remarkably similar to those found in well-known murdered-girl ballads, such as "Pretty Polly," "Omie Wise," and "The Jealous Lover." Events, characters, motivations, and plot were presented through this framework: the simple country girl led astray by a clever degenerate. Nearly all variants of the Pearl Bryan ballad point the same moral:
Young ladies now take warning Young men are so unjust, It may be your best lover But you know not whom to trust.
Representations of this formula appear in such diverse genres as the ballad "Poor Ellen Smith" and the novel An American Tragedy.
As Anne Cohen demonstrates, both newspaper accounts and ballads tell the Pearl Bryan story from the same moral stance, express the same interpretation of character, and are interested in the same details. Both distort facts to accommodate a shared pattern of storytelling. This pattern consists of a plot formulathe murdered-girl formulathat is accompanied by stereotyped scenes, actors, and phrases. The headless bodysurely the most striking element in the Pearl Bryan caseis absent from those ballads that have survived. Anne Cohen contends that a decapitated heroine does not belong to the formulaa murdered heroine, yes, but not a decapitated one. Similarly, newspapers made much of Pearl's "innocence" and tended to downplay the second murderer. Only one murderer, the lover, belongs to the stereotype.
Poor Pearl, Poor Girl! is a ballad study conducted on historic- geographic lines; that is, it seeks to trace the history and interrelations of a series of ballad texts and to relate the ballads directly to their ideological and historical context in the American scene. It also compares the narrative techniques of ballad composition with the techniques of other forms of popular narrative, especially newspaper journalism.
Poor Pearl, Poor Girl!: The Murdered-Girl Stereotype in Ballad and Newspaper
148Poor Pearl, Poor Girl!: The Murdered-Girl Stereotype in Ballad and Newspaper
148Product Details
ISBN-13: | 9780292764682 |
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Publisher: | University of Texas Press |
Publication date: | 01/01/1973 |
Series: | American Folklore Society Memoir Series , #58 |
Pages: | 148 |
Product dimensions: | 5.50(w) x 8.50(h) x 0.34(d) |