Why Didn't Lizzie leave New England?

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NancyDrew
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Why Didn't Lizzie leave New England?

Post by NancyDrew »

We'll never know the truth as to who actually swung the weapon that ended the lives of Abby and Andrew...but we DO know that Lizzie's life before, during and after the trial was not a happy one.

And so I have to ask this, as I've wondered many times: Why do you (referring to all of you reading this who care to answer) think that Lizzie didn't just take her inheritance and LEAVE the area entirely? Was the case so widespread that she couldn't escape public knowledge of it, even if she had gone to the west coast?

She supposedly had wanderlust in her heart...enjoyed trips away from home, spent umpteen weeks in Europe with no worse for wear, so why NOT just pick up and get the heck out of Dodge?

Finally freed from the bondage she suffered at the hands of her miserly father and "mean old thing" stepmother, she had money and multitude of options that it brings. It just one point of this entire mystery that has nagged away at me...thoughts?
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InterestedReader
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Re: Why Didn't Lizzie leave New England?

Post by InterestedReader »

It is surprising. Was she just thick-skinned?
She was something of a Europhile to judge from her careful keepsaking of her 'Grand Tour'... Perhaps she took further trips over here but it's escaped the attention of researchers? She'd change her name when travelling, I think I've read....
However, it's hard to see how any amount of travelling would ease her problems in Fall River.

There's a stubbornness in Lizzie Borden, an obduracy... I can't characterise it very well because I need to study her much more! but there's a puzzling disconnect to her. I wonder if today she wouldn't be classified as 'special needs' or 'educationally challenged' or some such, whereas in 1892 the issue of her mental aberration was decorously disguised. And if that's bunkum then perhaps she was self-willed to the nth degree, remained deeply immature, and imagined she would always get what she wanted, one day or another, including social acceptance.
Last edited by InterestedReader on Thu Aug 25, 2016 5:26 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Twokeets
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Re: Why Didn't Lizzie leave New England?

Post by Twokeets »

This is a great question. Hard to answer. I think stubbornness probably played a factor. Maybe also a sort of passiveness, where she didn't feel up to changing her whole life, but preferred to pretend, in part anyway, that things were normal, that life would proceed despite the unpleasantness.
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Re: Why Didn't Lizzie leave New England?

Post by Phil1963 »

Not knowing much about Lizzie other than the murders, I can only offer a few vague guesses.

1) I'm not saying Lizzie was stupid (although I wonder), but let's face it, she never would have qualified for Mensa. Some of her actions before and immediately after the murders make me suspect that she didn't do real any pre-planning at all; she just figured she'd kill when she got the chance, then improvise as she went along.

Obviously, I think she did it. But let's just assume for a moment that she was innocent. Well, she was in her early thirties. That's not a child, but it's at a point in life where there are still lessons to be learned:

2) Take a group of humans -- that is, to use Douglas Adams's phrase, a group of bipedal carbon-based life forms descended from apes -- with all their natural frictions, rivalries, dislikes, competitions, et cetera, and put them into a situarion where they're required to all more or less get along with each other ... that is, any human society, whether it's teenagers in high school, seniors in a retirement home, or a small city like Fall River ... then whisper to them, "Hey, see that person over there? It's OK if you hate her." ... and it all comes out.

3) One of the functions of the outcast in a society is to be the "sin eater"; the person the community piles all its misdeeds onto, exiles, then pretends that by doing so it's cleansed itself of those wrongs. Hey, Lizzie was accused of the murders by the criminal justice system, formally tried, and acquitted. Fair enough. But if there's any way to confirm this, I'll happily bet a hundred bucks that in the years that followed she was accused by whispers, tried in the court of knowing looks, and quietly convicted of a lot of stuff she didn't do.

4) There are some battles you just can't win, and as painful as it may be, there are times in life when you're better off cutting your losses and moving on.

5) Often, people are going to believe whatever they want to believe; and when people decide they want to believe something bad about a person, they're not even going to listen to anything that person says.

6) Some people just aren't worth the trouble.

Some people learn those lessons early in life. Some don't learn them until very late. Some never do. I'm guessing -- and it's nothing more than a guess -- that she thought that she could, over time, bring the community around in her favor; and by the time she realized that wouldn't happen, it was easier to just stay where she was because of inertia.

That's if she was innocent. If she was guilty ... well, who knows? An act of conscience, maybe? "I killed 'em, I got away with it, and I got the money; but I'll at least stick around and take this punishment."
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NancyDrew
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Re: Why Didn't Lizzie leave New England?

Post by NancyDrew »

Good answers, thanks guys.

I'm wondering how far spread news of the trial was in the United States at the end of the 19th century. Was it picked by newspapers outside of New England? Would she have been followed or harassed by some enterprising young journalist trying to make a name for him/herself, if she had indeed left the North East?

Regarding Lizzie's mental status, I don't remember where i read it, but somewhere, someone mentioned that she was thought of as "slow." She certainly suffered from social anxiety. Maybe the thought of having to start over someplace BRAND new was just too daunting for her...
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Re: Why Didn't Lizzie leave New England?

Post by InterestedReader »

The entire American continent was following the Borden story! I've been reading through online 'press accounts. It's fascinating. There was the contemporary kind of news-feed where every title would be more or less printing the same material but there was fervid fight to get that one twist or 'scoop'.

We read that upon being acquitted Lizzie went home and had a gleeful time laughing at the illustrators' depictions of herself. Wow, that suggests some sang-froid. Because a lot of the copy, the text, the characterisation of Lizzie Borden, was enough to make any halfway sensitive person weep. It was kept alive, too, the Borden story, over the years. Imagine if you were Bridget. By 1900 the 'press were claiming Bridget Sullivan's guilt had now been proved. There'd be litigation today. But Bridget didn't sue. I'm rather beginning to see why Bridget, certainly, would want to get out of Massachusetts.

Henrietta Morse called Lizzie 'peculiar', a word which in those days rather had the sense of 'singular'... I go cautiously, but so far, and by weighing the contemporary qualifiers, feel it's certain she was behaviourally odd. She was gauche and socially maladroit. And there's indications everywhere in the words of Emma, Bridget, Bowen, Morse, Mrs Churchill - just about everyone in her restricted little circle - of a protective stance having always operated towards Lizzie.
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Twokeets
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Re: Why Didn't Lizzie leave New England?

Post by Twokeets »

And she could be socially awkward, particularly given weirdness at home, but it doesn't mean she was slow, necessarily. I mean she may have been, or she may simply have seemed a bit slow.
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Re: Why Didn't Lizzie leave New England?

Post by Phil1963 »

InterestedReader wrote: And there's indications everywhere in the words of Emma, Bridget, Bowen, Morse, Mrs Churchill - just about everyone in her restricted little circle - of a protective stance having always operated towards Lizzie.
I was already aware that Emma acted that way toward Lizzie, but not that the others did; I'm not disputing it, just saying that it got me thinking.

The "sin eater" phenomenon I wrote about above can happen in families as well as societies. In dysfunctional families, one person can end up being tagged as "the weird one," "the sick one," etc, and getting the blame for everyone else's crap dumped on them. Creepy vibes between Andrew and Lizzie? Oh, Andrew's a great guy and that's Lizzie's fault, she's got problems. Abby and Lizzie don't get along? Well, Lizzie's kinda, shall we say, odd, and doesn't get along with anyone. Etc.

I don't want to be misunderstood. I'm not endorsing the idea of incest between Andrew and Lizzie; and who knows what might have happened to cause Lizzie to stop calling Abby "mother" and switch to "Mrs. Borden"; rather, I'm just using those as illustrative examples. And whatever happened in the Borden family would only explain what Lizzie did, not excuse it. But here's a family that rarely dines together, where certain members go to extraordinary lengths to have as little contact as possible with other members, and where there's a Berlin Wall of sorts going through the upstairs. One of those things that make me go "hmmm" ...
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Re: Why Didn't Lizzie leave New England?

Post by Franz »

In my opinion, Lizzie didn't leave Fall River probably because:

1) With her remaining Lizzie, the killer of her father and stepmother, wanted people to believe that she was innocent.

2) She was innocent, tout court.
"Mr. Morse, when you were told for the THIRD time that Abby and Andrew had been killed, why did you pronounce a "WHAT" to Mrs. Churchill? Why?"
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Re: Why Didn't Lizzie leave New England?

Post by mspitstop »

A close friend of hers was interviewed several years after the trial and was asked this very question. She said that Lizzie had told her that she wanted to be in Fall River when they found the real killer. I believe you can find it in the forward of "The Trial of Lizzie Borden" by Edmund Pearson. If not, then it's "More Studies in Murder", same author. Lizzie believed she knew who the killer was and she felt it was Uncle Hiram Harrington. It is not as farfetched as you'd think when you find out that his blacksmith shop was just two blocks, almost directly, behind the Borden house.
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Re: Why Didn't Lizzie leave New England?

Post by Franz »

... There at last Lizzie sank into her sister's arms. "I want to go home," She told Emma, "take me straight home tonight."
"Tonight?"
"Yes, tonight." Lizzie said. "I want to see the old place and settle down at once."...

--- Sarah Miller, "The Borden Murders: Lizzie Borden and the Trial of the Century".
"Mr. Morse, when you were told for the THIRD time that Abby and Andrew had been killed, why did you pronounce a "WHAT" to Mrs. Churchill? Why?"
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