WHEN WOMEN KILL: QUESTIONS OF AGENCY AND SUBJECTIVITY

"Based on case studies from Canada, the US, UK and Australia, this book examines the ways in which female killers are constructed in the media, in law and in feminist discourse almost invariably as victims rather than as actors in the crimes they commit. Morrissey argues that by denying the possibility of female agency in crimes of torture, rape and murder, feminist theorists are, with the best of intentions, actually denying women the full freedom to be human. The case studies cover, among others, the battered wife Pamela Sainsbury, who killed her husband as he slept, the serial killer Aileen Wournos, who murdered seven middle-aged men in Florida between 1989 and 1990, Tracey Wiggington, the so-called 'lesbian vampire killer', and Karla Homolka who helped her husband kill two teenage girls in St. Catherines, Ontario in 1993. This radical new book will be provocative reading for students and scholars alike in gender studies, criminology and cultural studies."--Jacket.