People's Pilot, Volume 3, Number 37, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 2 March 1894 — WOMEN AT SENSATIONAL TRIALS [ARTICLE]

WOMEN AT SENSATIONAL TRIALS

Only an Indication of the Persistence of Primal Nature. Among the crowds that pack a, steaming, iU-ventilated court-room at a sensational murder trial there are always numbers of women, says the New York Sun. None more persistent than they in gaining entrance, whether by the use of shoulders and elbows in the crowd, or by discovering circuitous routes, by means of introduction or acquaintance, through the side door. Through all ghastliness’of detail they sit, the most interested of all spectators. Neither the comments of men nor the criticisms of newspapers disturb their presence. This manifestation of unwholesome interest on the one hand and of indifference on the other has been regarded as a new and inexplicable transformation in the womanly nature, which is by nature gentle, tender, and averse to witnessing human suffering. Any possible solution of the development of such unlovely traits is referred to her newhorn ideas of emancipation and independence and assumption of the rights and privileges of men. This view seem* hasty and ill-founded. Without ransacking history it is sufficient to recall Gerome’s picture, “Pollice Verso” and the faces of furies that the vestal virgins wear, as, with thumbs turned down, they give the signal for a fight to the finish. Whoever has read Walter Scott knows how women thronged to see the poor wretches swing. No stage representation of a witch burning or a Puritan scaffold would be considered correct without eager women surging about the base. In Spain no woman hesitates to go to a bull fight, and the peril of the bull fighter only gives zest to the scene. Hangings are now private, the bull fight is prohibited in this country.- The court-room has taken the place of the arena in those spec tacles of human anguish, of deadly dramatic conflict which no gloss of civilization has yet covered from view in the human breast. The rise of the novel, with its pictured woes, has done something to fill this need, but imagination fails to satisfy where the eye can rest and the mind can feed upon the actual spectacle. When women throng the court-room their presence is only the indication of the persistence of that primal nature that they hold in common with men.