Crime and Punishment in American History - Lawrence M. Friedman [130]
The celebrated trial of Chester Gillette, which inspired Theodore Dreiser’s novel, An American Tragedy, is a good example. Dreiser’s version was not far from the “real life” drama in its essential outline. Gillette was accused of murdering Grace Brown at Big Moose Lake, New York, early in the twentieth century. Gillette was an ambitious young man; he was poor, but he had wealthy relatives. Unfortunately, he was burdened with a plain, working-class girlfriend. She became pregnant; he killed her, because she stood in his way. A jury convicted Gillette, and he was put to death.30
Dreiser’s choice of title was extremely apt. This was an American tragedy, American to the core. It was a tragedy of upward mobility, of a young man’s climb up the ladder. What thwarted Gillette were the rules of gender relations in respectable society. On the one hand, the blurring of class lines made the tragedy possible. What Gillette dreamed of achieving was certainly not impossible. Far from it; the goal seemed just within reach. But Grace Brown held him back. On the other hand, Grace, too, had aspirations. In England, thousands of servant girls were seduced and abandoned by the men they worked for: sons of merchants, young baronets, doctors, members of the bar. But these victims never had Grace’s chance. They could never hope to force a man of higher rank into marriage. Grace’s hopes were real, and they led to her death.
Nineteenth-century America was a land of opportunity—for some. Opportunity means, in part, the chance to change identities. All the crimes discussed in this chapter were crimes that turned on false identity, or false position in society. The great virtue of a traditional community is that nobody ever has to ask: Who am I? Its great vice is that one is stuck forever with the answer. In this country, men (and, to some extent, women)an were allowed to choose who they were; allowed to discover and create an identity. But this game had rules, and breaking the rules was a crime. In the twentieth century, as we shall see, the rules changed once more, and the criminal justice system changed along with it.
The crimes discussed in this chapter also concern another core concept of nineteenth-century culture: respectability. This is a quality that can inhere in anybody, regardless of wealth, or class. Not everybody can become rich or famous. In this society, failure is just as common as success, probably more common. Respectability is a kind of consolation prize. Anybody who really wants it can achieve it; and the status that goes with it. But what is respectability? Essentially, it is a way of life, a code of conduct. And there is nothing standing in the way (formally at least). Anyone can lead a respectable life; anyone can be honest, virtuous, clean-living, just, and humane.
Respectability is an inner quality; but like a lot of inner qualities, it is judged by outward appearances: the way a person dresses, walks, talks, comports herself. It is the community, the public, common reputation, and the like, that confer “respectable” status on people. In communities made up of strangers, or in which lots of people come and go, community reputation is not a safeguide. The bigamist and swindler took advantage of this structural flaw. They imitated respectable behavior; they were imposters of respectability. This was among the worst aspects of their crimes.
The nineteenth century, as we have seen, put great value on appearances. Secret vice was not condemned as much as open vice; this was the essence of what I called the “Victorian compromise” (see chapter 6). In this regard, too, there was a great divide between the nineteenth and the twentieth centuries. If the theme of the nineteenth century