She-Devil in the City of Angels: Gender, Violence, and the Hattie Woolsteen Murder Case in Victorian Era Los Angeles

by Cara Anzilotti

Overview

This compelling study of the American public's response to the fate of accused murderer Hattie Woolsteen uses this legal case to examine the complexities of gender history and societal fears about the changing roles of women during the Victorian era.

• Provides a solid introduction to women's/gender history that explains the nuances of shifting attitudes regarding gender roles and women's place in American society at the end of the 19th century

• Enables an understanding of 19th-century anxieties about rapid urbanization and the attendant perceived breakdown of community as well as how law enforcement of the period—then in its infancy—was subject to political influence and societal expectations

• Underscores the role of the press in shaping public attitudes about community values and ideals, documenting how the news during the Victorian era was big business and objectivity was not a priority—not unlike today's media

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781440840982
Publisher:	ABC-CLIO, Incorporated
Publication date:	06/20/2016
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	180
File size:	3 MB

About the Author

Cara Anzilotti, PhD, is associate professor of history at Loyola Marymount University.

Table of Contents

Preface ix

Acknowledgments xiii

Chapter 1 "It Was Murder" 1

Chapter 2 True Women and Women Adrift 19

Chapter 3 The Unwritten Law 41

Chapter 4 Sex and the Victorian City 57

Chapter 5 Reaping- the Whirlwind 83

Chapter 6 The Story, Not the Facts 99

Chapter 7 Getting Away with Murder 123

Epilogue: "She told such a plausible story…" 149

Notes 157

Bibliography 169

Index 177

What People are Saying About This

Janet Fireman

"She-Devil—more than a murder case history—situates and decodes a complex, contentious, and violent Los Angeles in the 1880s. From sources disparate as popular speculation, press hyperbole, factual forensics, and broad historical reading, Cara Anzilotti shapes an engrossing narrative delivering a progressive understanding of gender-role identity and ideology set against a cultural scene of ambitious if merciless women, ruthless libertines and their joint offspring: murder, arson, retribution, and transgressions of every stripe. Anzilotti’s stories and messages from the past produce powerful reading for today."

Katherine A.S. Sibley

“With meticulous research in the popular press of the day, this book well illuminates the gendered nature of justice in the late nineteenth-century American West. The phenomenon of gendered justice, of course, has hardly gone away and the book is most timely; the criminal justice system continues to be affected by gender, race, and class, while the media shapes greatly how we explore the intersection of crime and cultural expectations. But beyond its explorations of the nineteenth-century justice system, Anzilotti’s book is also a rollicking tale, sure to please a wide range of readers.”