The Rights of Women and the Sexual Relations/Part 1/13. Hanging a Woman
"HANGING A WOMAN."
(From "Der Pionier," July 29, 1855.)
In Troy, N. Y., a Mrs. Robinson, who has poisoned her husband, has been sentenced to be hanged on the third of August. Now the governor is besieged from all sides with petitions for pardon, because the feelings revolt at the thought of having a woman hanged. What delicacy of feeling in a country where hanging partly takes the place of national holidays! Would not the hanging. and dangling of a female prisoner, especially if she were pretty, afford a most piquant excitement for the savage taste of the criminal mob?
What real motive dictates this petition to the governor? Is it American gallantry? Hardly, for this is usually practised where something is to be gained thereby, were it only the approval of fashion. Is it the disgrace for the feminine sex which is to witness one of its highly honored members ending on the gallows? Possibly; although at other times we are not so zealous in warding off disgrace from the sex.. But the chief motive is presumably a natural aversion towards hanging, which has come into consciousness and reached such a degree of intensity that it at last had to vent itself in petitions for pardon when the spectacle of a feminine delinquent presented itself. And since at the same time the consciousness arose that this aversion had not made itself felt on occasions of the hanging of men, its manifestation is now brought forward under the pretext that it is inhuman or unmanly to hang a woman. If a woman had not sufficed to disgust our republican gentlemen with hanging, a beautiful maiden, or perhaps a child, would have been required to at last universally awaken the consciousness that capital punishment, especially hanging, is a barbarity, nay, even a bestiality. That this recognition could be held in abeyance until a woman became the means of bringing it to light; that the gallows adorned with a male corpse could hitherto be considered as a show, or at least as an interesting spectacle, and was advanced to the dignity of a tragedy only at the thought of a hanged female, proves only how vulgar and unrepublican our popular consciousness still is; for capital punishment, especially hanging, is as great an anomaly in a republic as, for instance, torture for the "religion of love." Perhaps Mrs. Robinson will have the honor of involuntarily having given the impulse towards the abolition of capital punishment in the chief State of the Union. To be sure, it is no flattering testimony for our worthy law-givers that it required the instruction of a poison-mixer to teach them to become humane!
But apart from this point, and assuming that capital punishment were generally justifiable and ought to be upheld, there is still another ground for protest against the hanging of Mrs. Robinson. This ground lies in the criminal irresponsibility of women as against men. I do not want to make the statement that everything is permissible for a woman to do against a man, but I do want to maintain what holds true for women as well as for slaves, that the criminal can be held responsible only to such a degree as he is free. Therefore, whoever wants bondage must be contented to take crime into the bargain; whoever wants the right to punish crime must first concede liberty.
Strictly considered, no member of a political community is responsible before the criminal court, for the moral standard of every individual is only a product of the general standard, so that the responsibility really always falls back upon the community. This reason alone already suffices to stamp everything that we call punishment and the right to punish as nonsense and barbarity.
But if this doubt is thrown in general upon the responsibility of the individual, how much more must this be the case where the ruling portion takes away the responsibility from a class or a sex by disenfranchisement, by limitation, or by neglect! Whoever rules is responsible, for whoever rules is free. But women are ruled, and whoever is ruled is not only not free, but is always the suffering party, and is therefore always thrown back upon the revolution. Woman and the revolution are the most natural confederates. Probably that is the reason why the revolution is always represented as a woman. But ruling man would make woman as well as the slave responsible, although he will not grant them the conditions which make responsibility possible, and thus he punishes in them really himself, i.e., his own wrongdoing. In how far the actions of the suffering party are a necessary reaction against oppression, justifiable acts of defence against inflicted injustice, natural attempts at compensation for rights withheld, a forcibly sought outlet for a nature perverted by force, unavoidable outbreaks of inclinations falsely directed by binding circumstances, — all this our present courts of justice shrink from investigating, because such an investigation would overthrow our entire barbaric justice, together with its barbaric foundation. But what the administration of justice neglects to do, the critic, the publicist must at least strive to make good.
Unbiassed justice must always be predisposed to take the side of the weaker party, because in a conflict of rights the presumption must generally be that the weaker party has suffered a wrong or has been incited to do a wrong. Women are almost always in that case. For all the wrong that is done by women the men as a rule ought to bear the blame, be it directly on account of their treatment or indirectly through their education of, and the position they impose upon, women. Iam not acquainted with Mrs. Robinson's history, and do not remember the proceedings concerning the circumstances and motive of her deed. But so much I do know, that a woman is not by nature designed for a criminal, and that her heart must be wounded or hardened by very peculiar inducements or influences if she can resolve to commit a murder. When Mrs. Baker in St. Louis shot the libertine Hoffmann, all the world was indignant at this deed, and the murderess was looked upon asa monster. I at once declared the condemnation of the murderess by public opinion as premature, because only very exceptional (then still unknown) grievances could bring a woman to do such a deed. Later it was brought out that this Hoffmann, who had stood in intimate relations with her, had not only exposed her on this account to others, but had also abused her confidence by transmitting to her a loathsome disease.
When the men have become so depraved that they must stop to think to which species of beast they belong, it is always the woman who still represents the human species and who still upholds human feelings. When the father has become a beast, the mother saves him again by the birth of a human being.
I do not want to use the moral expression that the woman is "better" than the man, but she certainly is more humanely organized, and in the retirement to which she is condemned she is less exposed to the hardening and demoralizing influences of the vulgar atmosphere in which the male sex at present still disports itself. A crime committed by a woman will, therefore, generally have more cogent and deeper motives than the same crime committed by a man. How often we hear in this country of men who have murdered their wives; and how rare is the opposite case! But who is there to maintain that men have to suffer more at the hands of the women than the women at the hands of the men? This juxtaposition alone proves the weaker disposition of the feminine nature towards criminal deeds; consequently the necessity of applying a different standard in the judging or condemning of a Mrs. Robinson than of a Mr. Whiskeyson or of any wife-murderer by whatsoever name he may be called. A husband may perhaps slay his wife for some pat rejoinder; the wife poisons her husband only after her feelings, her love, her pride, tortured perhaps through all grades of despair, has killed all womanliness within her, and has left nothing of it except the feeling of revenge.
If I had to present a petition to Governor Clark, I should above all things, as my motive for so doing, accompany it by an elucidation of the nature and social position of woman. But I should then also not fail to discuss the relation that obtains between present marriage laws and the crimes of married people. I am convinced that the marriage laws commit more crimes than passion. That a dependent woman, in the power of a hated man, should sacrifice her life with all its desires, hopes, and needs to a senseless law is a requirement which must indeed be called an indirect incitement to murder. If Mrs. Robinson should be hanged, it is probably for the law-givers and the priests that she would die.