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The Trials of Laura Fair
- Author
- Carole Haber
- Narrator
- Pam Ward
- Publisher
- Blackstone Publishing
- Publish Date
- 1 August 2013
- Run Time
- 10 hours 38 minutes
- Format
- Audiobook
What to expect
On November 3, 1870, on a San Francisco ferry, Laura Fair shot and killed her married lover, A. P. Crittenden. Throughout her two murder trials, Fair’s lawyers, supported by expert testimony from physicians, claimed that the shooting was the result of temporary insanity caused by a severely painful menstrual cycle. The first jury disregarded such testimony, choosing instead to focus on Fair’s disreputable character. In the second trial, however, an effective defense built on contemporary medical beliefs and gendered stereotypes led to a verdict that shocked Americans across the country. In this rousing history, Carole Haber probes changing ideas about morality and immorality, masculinity and femininity, love and marriage, health and disease, and mental illness to show that all these concepts were reinvented in the Victorian West.
Haber’s book examines the era’s most controversial issues, including suffrage, the gendered courts, women’s physiology, and free love. This notorious story enriches our understanding of Victorian society, opening the door to a discussion about the ways in which reputation—especially female reputation—is shaped.
Critics Review
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“Mesmerizing…Haber’s captivating social history opens a window into Victorian America’s thinking about issues related to gender, women’s reputations, law, and religion.”
Publishers Weekly
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“In her outstanding new book, Carole Haber examines Laura Fair’s murder case, as well as its lasting significance and continuing impact on the portrayal of women in the press and popular media. The scholarship is excellent and the read is thrilling.”
Gordon Morris Bakken, California State University at Fullerton
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“In this absorbing account of a notorious San Francisco murder, Carole Haber probes the multiple versions of the female defendant created by prosecution and defense attorneys to explain why she shot her lover. Haber then goes beyond these competing ideas of gender to offer an ingenious explanation of the crime that has puzzled mystery lovers for well over a century.”
Patricia Cline Cohen, University of California at Santa Barbara
User Reviews
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Details
- Author
- Carole Haber
- Narrator
- Pam Ward
- Duration
- 10 hours 38 minutes
- Release Date
- 1 August 2013
- ISBN
- 9781481596282
- Format
- Audiobook
- Publisher
- Blackstone Publishing
- Genre
- Gender studies: women and girls, History of the Americas, Criminal law: procedure and offences, Crime and criminology
Synopsis
On November 3, 1870, on a San Francisco ferry, Laura Fair shot and killed her married lover, A. P. Crittenden. Throughout her two murder trials, Fair’s lawyers, supported by expert testimony from physicians, claimed that the shooting was the result of temporary insanity caused by a severely painful menstrual cycle. The first jury disregarded such testimony, choosing instead to focus on Fair’s disreputable character. In the second trial, however, an effective defense built on contemporary medical beliefs and gendered stereotypes led to a verdict that shocked Americans across the country. In this rousing history, Carole Haber probes changing ideas about morality and immorality, masculinity and femininity, love and marriage, health and disease, and mental illness to show that all these concepts were reinvented in the Victorian West.Haber’s book examines the era’s most controversial issues, including suffrage, the gendered courts, women’s physiology, and free love. This notorious story enriches our understanding of Victorian society, opening the door to a discussion about the ways in which reputation—especially female reputation—is shaped.
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