Troublesome Women: Gender, Crime, and Punishment in Antebellum Pennsylvania by Erica Rhodes Hayden

Author:Erica Rhodes Hayden [Hayden, Erica Rhodes]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780271082264
Google: NyGvugEACAAJ
Amazon: 0271082267
Publisher: Penn State University Press
Published: 2019-01-14T00:00:00+00:00

It is very sad to be so lonely

And far from friends or home

But may my love proove to be true

To cheer my sad hart ever more [sic]52

Although the letters from Elizabeth Elwell depict the desire to be free from prison, the poetry provides a different perspective on her emotions and the role of writing in her attempt to maintain a sense of self. This is a dark poem, one that illustrates her sadness at being incarcerated, as she mentioned several times the struggles she faced with loneliness and knowing that friends and family were far away from her. This poem provides an intimate glimpse at the impact of prison life on inmates: sadness, gloom, broken hearts, and despair. Poetry became a way to verbalize her feelings, and the writing of it also provided a distraction for a few moments from her incarceration. The poem is interesting also in that it shows, along with the letters, that she has found solace in her incarceration with her friend Albert. It appears that the relationship was a way for Elwell to have something to keep her emotionally connected not only to herself but someone else during her sentence, especially during periods of homesickness and loneliness. Through these writings and the relationship, Elwell maintained individual dignity and selfhood. In an institution determined to strip inmates of these characteristics, writings (whether sanctioned or not) allowed them some type of control over their thoughts and feelings. Inmates’ writings demonstrated that they sought to maintain their identities in an institution that strove to break them down.

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The small numbers of female inmates in these early penitentiaries resulted in the women being treated differently than the male inmates. The women’s disciplinary and reformation needs were often ignored, resulting in what appears to be a warehousing effect in some instances. The lack of discussion regarding female inmates in the prison reports indicates that rehabilitation was limited to male prisoners and that employees were not comfortable having women in the same institution. Yet, “the neglect with which the unfortunate and sinning female is treated” provides only one perspective on the way women experienced Pennsylvania’s prisons before the Civil War.53 Although their treatment was often rife with inconsistency and lack of rehabilitation, the fact that the four original female inmates of Eastern State, all convicted of manslaughter, spent a great deal of time out of their cells, or that Maria Penrose had freedom to roam Western State, illustrates the struggle prison officials had with handling female prisoners, often resulting in more freedoms being given to this particular set of inmates, which women readily took advantage of to mold their incarceration experiences.

Yet, although prison officials made an active choice not to push for women’s moral reform and often left female prisoners to their own devices or allowed them more freedom within the prison, the women were not necessarily treated worse than male inmates. The female inmates used the flexibility or leniency they had in their incarceration and worked against the prison system. The

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