Judith Walkowitz argues that JtR has contributed to women’s sense of vulnerability in modern urban culture. The perpetrator of the murders in Whitechapel achieved mythic status, but the ‘moral’ message to women everywhere was that the city is a dangerous place for women, and they are safer at home (under male ‘protection’ presumably).
Walkowitz believes the myth of ‘Jack’ emerged from class and gender tensions in Victorian London. Whitechapel was an area of abject poverty. The middle classes feared socialist uprisings and there was also an atmosphere of anti-Semitism. Prior to the murders in 1888, the Criminal Law Amendment Act of 1885 increased the age of consent from 13 to 16, and gave the police powers to prosecute prostitutes and brothel keepers. Vigilance groups and social purity groups had also been set up to crack down on ‘male lust’. This may have increased the vulnerability of prostitutes prior to the ripper murders.
The media fuelled the JtR myth by presenting the murders and the man hunt in a sensationalized and melodramatic way. The ripper’s exploits reinforced notions of male domination and female passivity.
The ‘Dear Boss’ letter sent to the press said:
‘I am down on whores and I shan’t quit ripping them up until I am buckled’.
With the subsequent postcards from ‘yours truly’, the press heightened the hysteria and social anxieties about the elusive perpetrator.
It was reported that men started intimidating women by threatening to ‘Whitechapel’ them. The ripper myth reinforced ideas of male domination, and women were made to collude through fear of death.
The ripper remains a powerful icon today, arguably because he continues to symbolize the cultural belief of women’s vulnerability in the face of male domination through brute physical force and violence. By achieving hero status JtR may have given ‘permission’ to the multitude of serial killers that have emerged over the decades, all of whom have continued to perpetrate the collective myth that it is OK to butcher women.
Walkowitz believes the myth of ‘Jack’ emerged from class and gender tensions in Victorian London. Whitechapel was an area of abject poverty. The middle classes feared socialist uprisings and there was also an atmosphere of anti-Semitism. Prior to the murders in 1888, the Criminal Law Amendment Act of 1885 increased the age of consent from 13 to 16, and gave the police powers to prosecute prostitutes and brothel keepers. Vigilance groups and social purity groups had also been set up to crack down on ‘male lust’. This may have increased the vulnerability of prostitutes prior to the ripper murders.
The media fuelled the JtR myth by presenting the murders and the man hunt in a sensationalized and melodramatic way. The ripper’s exploits reinforced notions of male domination and female passivity.
The ‘Dear Boss’ letter sent to the press said:
‘I am down on whores and I shan’t quit ripping them up until I am buckled’.
With the subsequent postcards from ‘yours truly’, the press heightened the hysteria and social anxieties about the elusive perpetrator.
It was reported that men started intimidating women by threatening to ‘Whitechapel’ them. The ripper myth reinforced ideas of male domination, and women were made to collude through fear of death.
The ripper remains a powerful icon today, arguably because he continues to symbolize the cultural belief of women’s vulnerability in the face of male domination through brute physical force and violence. By achieving hero status JtR may have given ‘permission’ to the multitude of serial killers that have emerged over the decades, all of whom have continued to perpetrate the collective myth that it is OK to butcher women.
Jack the Ripper and the Myth of Male Violence
Judith Walkowitz
Feminist Studies, Vol 8, No 3 (Autumn 1982) pp.543-574.
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