Cultural views of femininity exerted a powerful influence on the courtroom arguments used to defend or condemn notable women on trial in nineteenth-century and early-twentieth-century America. By ...examining the colorful rhetorical strategies employed by lawyers and reporters of women's trials in newspaper articles, trial transcriptions, and popular accounts, A. Cheree Carlson argues that the men in charge of these communication avenues were able to transform their own values and morals into believable narratives that persuaded judges, juries, and the general public of a woman's guilt or innocence._x000B__x000B_Carlson analyzes the situations of several women of varying historical stature, from the insanity trials of Mary Todd Lincoln and Lizzie Borden's trial for the brutal slaying of her father and stepmother, to lesser-known trials involving insanity, infidelity, murder, abortion, and interracial marriage. The insanity trial of Elizabeth Parsons Ware Packard, the wife of a minister, resulted from her attempts to change her own religion, while a jury acquitted Mary Harris for killing her married lover, suggesting that loss of virginity to an adulterous man was justifiable grounds for homicide. The popular conception of abortion as a "woman's crime" came to the fore in the case of Ann Loman (also known as Madame Restell), who performed abortions in New York both before and after it became a crime. Finally, Alice Rhinelander was sued for fraud by her new husband Leonard for "passing" as white, but the jury was more moved by the notion of Alice being betrayed as a woman by her litigious husband than by the supposed defrauding of Leonard as a white male. Alice won the case, but the image of womanhood as in need of sympathy and protection won out as well._x000B__x000B_At the heart of these cases, Carlson reveals clearly just how narrow was the line that women had to walk, since the same womanly virtues that were expected of them--passivity, frailty, and purity--could be turned against them at any time. These trials of popular status are especially significant because they reflect the attitudes of the broad audience, indicate which forms of knowledge are easily manipulated, and allow us to analyze how the verdict is argued outside the courtroom in the public and press. With gripping retellings and incisive analysis of these scandalous criminal and civil cases, this book will appeal to historians, rhetoricians, feminist researchers, and anyone who enjoys courtroom drama.
Kenneth Burke places order and hierarchy at the heart of his rhetorical theory. The impulse to order creates categories of terms used by cultures to construct social orders based on race, gender, ...class and economic status. These lead to a "paradox of purity" wherein individuals are evaluated substantively from that category despite their individual motivations. In 1925, a woman of mixed blood was accused of defrauding her husband by "passing" as white. Her white lawyers were required to maintain the racist social structure while simultaneously freeing their client from the strictures of that structure. The paradox of purity was resolved through a transformation of terms until an ultimate order was recreated that retained the hierarchy, yet placed another collective category, gender, at the pinnacle.
This essay problematizes "history" and "public memory" by examining their polysemic and polyvalent nature. Collective memories are selectively chosen and highlighted to fit the needs of a particular ...social group. Ownership of "history" then becomes a hegemonic device that controls our interpretation of the past and subsequent behavior in the future. In the case of the "Amistad Affair, "the ramifications of these choices reached from the early nineteenth century court of law to the Hollywood studio of the late twentieth century. Thus, it serves as a paradigm case of the struggle over who controls the narrative possibilities of history and memory.
Kenneth Burke's concept of literary reference "frames" has become important in the study of rhetoric and social change. The tragic frame has been thoroughly examined, but other metaphors for ...rhetorical movements remain relatively unexplored. The rhetoric of selected woman humorists from 1820 to 1880 exemplifies the operation of various frames related to the comic. The prevailing form of women's humor became less and less truly comic, eventually sliding to the satiric and finally into burlesque. The comic frame could not be maintained, because these writers were unable to foster identification between females and males, and failed to provide a world view that could accommodate social change.
Kenneth Burke claims that "bridging devices"; are important symbolic tools for overcoming division within a social order. This study investigates the use of "bridging devices"; through an analysis of ...an early feminist text: Lucretia Coffin Mott's "Discourse on Woman"; (1849). Mott uses the Quaker concept of the "inner light"; to balance the tension between her conservative cultural milieu and her radical goals. Mott's rhetoric is instructive for modern feminists who face the task of uniting women with widely disparate cultural roots.
The American Female Moral Reform Society was one of the first ante-bellum reform movements to be founded and controlled by women. This paper examines the rhetoric of the society's primary organ, The ...Advocate of Moral Reform, to discover how these women justified abandoning their traditional feminine roles to pursue social change. The analysis reveals that through skillful casuistic stretching of the feminine ideal, the women were able to justify non-traditional actions in the name of traditional values. In so doing, the movement also created a new feminist consciousness that recognized the essential victimage of all women and their power to instigate social change.
The concept of "narrative" is becoming an avenue through which scholars can privilege nontraditional forms of communication. Communication scholars have been attempting to discover how some ...narratives may "ring true" with an audience by studying the strategies of the storytellers. This study brings these two impulses together through a case study of autobiographical letters written by a turn of the century prostitute to a Boston matron. In creating a narrative of her life, the author uses several rhetorical strategies to recreate her character so as to persuade her audience that she is worthy of respect. In so doing, she also persuades herself.
The question of how critics use "evidence" to persuade other critics that their scholarly conclusions have merit is examined, along with the question of what evidence is looked for.
The narrative perspective assumes that people may argue using premises based upon stories and dramas that have correspondence to their life experience. A central element of these stories is the ...characterization of their protagonists. This paper explores the importance of character by analyzing how it was utilized by the principals in the adultery trials of Henry Ward Beecher. It reveals how characterizations that were created in the literary realm were transferred to the arguments centering around the ministerial role as represented by Beecher. The successful transfer completely altered the audience's interpretations of the events in question.
The narrative elements of a popular trial can be manipulated by either side in an attempt to persuade juries that a particular woman is a criminal or a victim. The Packard case is a simple example. ...It is easy for the modern reader to dismiss the antiquated notion that failing to obey one’s husband is either a crime or a sure indication of madness. But it is also easy to dismiss the case on another basis. The judge in the case deliberately refused to delay the trial until an “expert” on insanity could arrive to testify. Thus, the rhetors and
