Who Is the Criminal Woman?

Nature is the party first responsible for the criminal. The learned Garofalo explained in his book "The Modern School of Crime Detection" that crime is no longer among sudden, aberrant acts, but has become a mature social act.

The learned Thompson, the researcher Wilson, and the natural historian "Virgilio" agree that the criminal woman is marked by a bodily weight lighter than that of the ordinary woman, and that she is able to use her left hand like the right.

Dr. "Le Bon" said that the criminal woman possesses a skull either large in size or small, a sloping forehead, protruding brows, broad jaws, and wide eye-sockets like those of the birds of prey. Professor "Gall" supported this study after testing it in practice, and added that the temporal protuberances are among the marks of savagery, and that these traits are never gathered all at once except in criminal women.

A study appeared in the "Scientific Review" of July 9, 1881, saying that the jaw is distinguished by a social attribute — speech and the smile — and by an animal attribute — mechanical motion and the bite; and the nose is what tips the scale. The form of the straight nose expresses the social, moral trait, while the hooked, or swollen, or twisted nose expresses the animal attribute. And it is inferred from the official statistics made by "Tarde" and Dr. "Bournet," and Messieurs "Yiferneh and Balotti," that the largest proportion of the women of the European world does not enjoy an ordinary, straight nose, but is marked by a nose hooked, swollen, bent, high, and sharp, and by a jaw thick, sloping, elongated, or rounded.

The researcher "Darwin" commented on woman's beauty and its connection with crime. He said that the element of beauty in woman is one, showing itself in attractiveness, or softness, or femininity, or in beauty itself; whereas the element of ugliness is ramified, individual, and various, with no way of measuring it against any model. Beauty fears crime, and ugliness runs after it.

The researcher "Ferri" lectured on the criminal elements in woman, and his conclusion was this: that the criminal woman is afflicted with barrenness of thought and of inference, and with strong dispositions toward imitation; in her heart of hearts she admits the abnormality of her own personality, so she shows no mercy to her own kind and no pity for her offspring, but is driven along, seeking revenge upon the humanity that did not perfect her making, did not secure her life, and did not help her. She feels that she is wronged in her rights, an outcast — and the psychological complexes compounded within her have deepened this feeling of hers, until she is a calm, gentle savage.

The absence of human personality shows itself in elemental weakness; the ruin of one's being appears in inward fear and disturbances, in the vital emptiness; disharmony, in ugliness and vanity; and lack of balance, in the collapse of morals. So the criminal woman is an element whose femininity has been extinguished, whose feeling has vanished, hardened into a bloody, brutish savagery; and this being feels itself a renegade in society, and that society hates it, persecutes it, and wars against it.

Crime is the highest degree of degradation. Some may consider crime a necessary element — an idea which arose, grew up, and was strengthened in society; Nazism endorsed its principle, on the view that every weak element must disappear so that humanity may bring about a sound society, free of diseases, in order to obtain a higher stock.

Yet crime in a human guise, in general, however lofty its aim, and however it strives toward nobility and good — in other words, the humanity of crime and its necessity do not justify its existence; and however necessary an element crime may be in life, it is, after all else, a crime.