eBook Murder Most Foul: The Killer and the American Gothic Imagination download

In Murder Most Foul the author traces the how crime, murder in particular has been portrayed throughout American history. By way of a plethora of example and clear concise narrative, she makes a very good argument that our view of crime in America has changed along with societies changing view of evil and its origins. Starting with the puritan view of inherited original sin to the enlightenment narrative of the murderer as monster; the authors says that all of the portrayals are attempts to deal with the question of how could something so evil occur. The fact that the answer that we receive is never completely satisfying drives the fascination with each new occurrence.
What makes this book so interesting is that while most of the examples are from the early 19th century; the parallels with the True Crime genre of today are uncanny. This is a very good book with the part about the crimes involving women being especially interesting. If I had one criticism of the book, and this is a mild one, it is that the final chapter on criminal insanity seemed tacked on and would have fitted into the overall narrative better if it were at the beginning of the book.
Overall this is a readable and informative book and I highly recommend it for anyone interested in history of crime( especially 19th century), gender studies, or early American popular culture.

The American white middle class, of course, reacts with facinated "horror" at the revelation that a murderer (preferably a serial sexual predator)is in their midst. As though they had never seen cruelty and depravity before they watch avidly as TV and True Crime accounts unfold to the last dripping second. But unlike the earlier religious basis for rejecting cruelty (termed sin), the perfected humanists don't see in themselves any degree of possibility for commission of such cruelty. Unlike the religious, the humanists don't think "there but for the grace of God (or dumb luck) go I".

Instead they react with (facinated)horror and sentence the miscreant (the mis-created) to the hell of prison or death row. Lately tired of using taxes to support prison rehabilitation or death row appeals they have discovered electronic shackeling and sentence the miscreant to life on a perpetual national sex offender registery where they consign the offender to a sort of social eternal damnation and include everyone from the boy down the street to Hanibal Lectre, as long as their heinous crime involved sex in any way (which by the way most facinates them).

Anyway the American Gothic Immagination (according to Ms Halttunen)throws such sinners/horrors (excuse me for mixing reliegious and humanist terminology) into permanant computer "outter darkness" because such murders etc are thought to possess no connecting humanity with the community of the most evolved human beings in history: The American White Middle Class. Those "horrifying" degenerates on the registry, in prison and on death row are not even acknowledged as throw backs in the evolution of mankind. They are Aliens/monsters in human form and are to be summarily dispenced with should they be discovered (Horror of Horrors)skulking about among us.

Great book elucidating as it does the difference between religious and humanist ideas about crime and punishment as exampled in the literature on Bloody (sexual)Murder

This is an astounding piece of intellectual history, helpful for anyone interested in nineteenth century literature, the shifting political and social ideologies of the time, or for the Gothic narrative in general. My only qualm with this book is that it often sets too many examples of a certain trope or Gothic convention (the wife-murder section is one example), which take up pages and pages. It had me going, "Alright, I get it. Move on with the argument."

The hardest history to write, is, arguably, cultural history. A professor I once knew phrased it thus - "When you sit down to write cultural history, you do your best, but knowing you are going to fail in some way." He meant that all the possible permutations of culture and the forces that impact culture defy the usual tools of chronology and simple "cause and effect." While this may indeed be so, this book manages to navigate those dangerous waters admirably.

Halttunen weaves a deft narrative about the subject of murder in eighteenth and nineteenth century America, and uses "execution sermons" and sensational but little known murder cases of the era to illustrate how the American attitude towards crime (especially with its reference to gender and social class) is a microcosm of an America in a state of massive cultural evolution. For example, the murder of prostitute Helen Jewett, a well-known courtesan of exceptional beauty, is a fascinating look into the "gendering" of crime as accounts praise her beauty but then descend into the most lurid speculation about her private life and her "fall from grace." It shows not only the "yellow press" at its worst, but how we - globally - will derive indirect gratification from the downfall of someone who is perceived as a "bad" person by shifting cultural standards. The book also powerfully suggests that the transition of murder from a "collective sin" to a private, voyeuristic "guilty pleasure" is part and parcel of the "privatization" of classes and individuals as the Republic grew up and grew prosperous. In other words, it is a small glimpse into a peculiar form of a "heart of darkness" any modern reader or even reality TV show maven will quickly recognize. But even more fascinating is her overview of how "alienists" and pseudo-science popular in the time period acted as a retardant to progressive changes in criminal investigation and mental health which still, even today, leave lingering traces. But Haltunnen is no doctrinaire theoritician, and disinclined to hysterical over-writing. She has a very pleasing empathy towards her long dead historical subjects which manages to bring them alive without descent into guesswork or - worse - speculative fiction. And like some of the best history, this subject invites more questions rather than posing as a definitive "last word."

Her research in primary source documents - newspapers, magazines, journals of the era - is broadly impressive indeed, and her examples well chosen as she advances her arguments.

I would caution the reader that some of the materials she chooses are, even by modern standards, disturbing. It is amazing that while we today think of our culture as "coarsened," the repressive eighteen hundreds could be on par or even worse.

I enthusiastically recommend this book. Beautifully researched, well-reasoned and well-supported, and written in a style anyone - professional historian or lay history lover - can access.