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Interpretive Challenges Posed by the Gendered Performances of Early American Female Criminals

Interpretive Challenges Posed by the Gendered Performances of Early American Female Criminals Amelia C. Lewis Auburn University he process of understanding, recovering, and researching early American female criminals is rife with complications.1 While writing my dissertation on female criminals and the nontraditional texts that we use to examine how these women communicated, expressed agency, and maintained a voice, I have often found myself coming up with more questions than answers. These questions present a theoretical problem of how to reconstruct a cultural narrative that includes female criminals when we do not have their own words with which to work. Examining women's texts often leads me to question how we read and analyze nonliterary texts such as trial transcripts, execution narratives, and other documents focused on these women. We face several interpretative challenges when trying to construct an accurate and complete narrative of any historical situation. This is compounded when the story of the woman's life is told largely through fragments written by people other than the woman herself. The execution narrative "The Declaration and Confession of Esther Rodgers" serves as a telling case in point. In addition to the narrative of the twenty-one-year-old servant girl who was executed in 1701 for infanticide, the published text includes a sermon by John http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Legacy: A Journal of American Women Writers University of Nebraska Press

Interpretive Challenges Posed by the Gendered Performances of Early American Female Criminals

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Publisher
University of Nebraska Press
Copyright
Copyright © 2008 The University of Nebraska Press.
ISSN
1534-0643
Publisher site
See Article on Publisher Site

Abstract

Amelia C. Lewis Auburn University he process of understanding, recovering, and researching early American female criminals is rife with complications.1 While writing my dissertation on female criminals and the nontraditional texts that we use to examine how these women communicated, expressed agency, and maintained a voice, I have often found myself coming up with more questions than answers. These questions present a theoretical problem of how to reconstruct a cultural narrative that includes female criminals when we do not have their own words with which to work. Examining women's texts often leads me to question how we read and analyze nonliterary texts such as trial transcripts, execution narratives, and other documents focused on these women. We face several interpretative challenges when trying to construct an accurate and complete narrative of any historical situation. This is compounded when the story of the woman's life is told largely through fragments written by people other than the woman herself. The execution narrative "The Declaration and Confession of Esther Rodgers" serves as a telling case in point. In addition to the narrative of the twenty-one-year-old servant girl who was executed in 1701 for infanticide, the published text includes a sermon by John

Journal

Legacy: A Journal of American Women WritersUniversity of Nebraska Press

Published: Jun 4, 2014

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