The subject of murder : gender, exceptionality, and the modern killer / Lisa Downing.

Includes bibliographies and index.

Murder and gender in the European nineteenth century -- "Real murderer and false poet": Pierre-François Lacenaire -- The "angel of arsenic": Marie Lafarge -- The beast in man: Jack and the rippers who came after -- The twentieth-century Anglo-American killer -- "Infanticidal" femininity: Myra Hindley -- "Monochrome man": Dennis Nilsen -- Serial killing and the dissident woman: Aileen Wuornos -- Kids who kill: defying the stereotype of the murderer -- By way of brief conclusion.

The subject of murder has always held a particular fascination for us. But, since at least the nineteenth century, we have seen the murderer as different from the ordinary citizen-a special individual, like an artist or a genius, who exists apart from the moral majority, a sovereign self who obeys only the destructive urge, sometimes even commanding cult followings. In contemporary culture, we continue to believe that there is something different and exceptional about killers, but is the murderer such a distinctive type? Are they degenerate beasts or supermen as they have been depicted?

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