By Nicola Goc
In her study of
anonymous infanticide news stories that appeared from 1822 to 1922 in the heart
of the British Empire, in regional Leicester, and in the penal colony of
Australia, Nicola Goc uses Critical Discourse Analysis to reveal both the
broader patterns and the particular rhetorical strategies journalists used to
report on young women who killed their babies. Her study takes Foucault’s
perspective that the production of knowledge, of 'facts' and truth claims, and
the exercise of power, are inextricably connected to discourse. Newspaper
discourses provide a way to investigate the discursive practices that brought
the nineteenth-century infanticidal woman - known as ‘the Infanticide’ - into
being. The actions of the infanticidal mother were understood as a fundamental
threat to society, not only because they subverted the ideal of Victorian
womanhood but also because a woman’s actions destroyed a man’s lineage. For
these reasons, Goc demonstrates, infanticide narratives were politicised in the
press and woven into interconnected narratives about the regulation of women,
women's rights, the family, the law, welfare, and medicine that dominated
nineteenth-century discourse. For example, the Times used individual stories of infanticide to argue against the
Bastardy Clause in the Poor Law that denied unmarried women and their children
relief. Infanticide narratives often adopted the conventions of the courtroom
drama, with the young transgressive female positioned against a body of male
authoritarian figures, a juxtaposition that reinforced male authority over
women. Alive to the marked differences between various types of newspapers,
Goc's study offers a rich and nuanced discussion of the Victorian press's
fascination with infanticide. At the same time, infanticide news stories shaped
how women who killed their babies were known and understood in ways that
pathologised their actions. This, in turn, influenced medical, judicial, and
welfare policies regarding the crime of infanticide and created an acceptable context
for how society viewed these women. Alive to the marked differences between
various types of newspapers, Goc's study offers a rich and nuanced discussion
of the Victorian press's fascination with infanticide.
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