"THERE WOULD NEVER BE A PHOTOGRAPH of Emma Borden. She remains an enigmatic, mysterious creature, virtually anonymous in the glare of her sister's notoriety.
There would be only a single pencil drawing: with her sharp shoulders pulled in, she sits quietly on a bench beside Lizzie, her black-gloved hand clutching at her eyes.
One encounters a pristine blankness, an ominous, puzzling vacancy about Emma. The few details that are known of her suggest that she possessed no personality at all, that she was devoid of emotions. But in looking further there appears a darker, more tenacious element that even her own verbal reticence could not fully conceal.
Is it more than imagination which causes us to focus so on this Victorian lady?
Neighbors in the town of Fall River remembered Emma as a small, plain-looking woman who appeared to desire nothing so much as to be overlooked. Their accounts of her agree that she was prim-looking, extremely quiet, retiring, that she was thin-faced with bony, pale features.
Her few friends seemed to find something flattering in her friendship, as if gaining the confidence of a shy, wild animal. She was timid and invariably evasive. She was never known to have a special talent. She did not long to travel, as did so many ladies of her day. She never married, never had a beau and took no part in the social life of that industrious Massachusetts community on the banks of the Quequechan River twelve miles northwest of New Bedford."
--Haven't found the height yet. How would he know?
