Post by ScotKaren on Jun 21, 2006 9:23:12 GMT -5
www.thei.aust.com/isite/btl/btlingreenwood.html
By JAYNE MARGETTS
SURROUNDED by a library of old and yellowing books, the shine of faded wood and a barrage of theatrical and mystical figures that decorate the top of the kitchen table in her home in Footscray, Melbourne, Kerry Greenwood is lightyears away from the grimy and cold interior of a gaol cell. The novelist, Legal Aid solicitor and voice for women shackled by silence and abuse, spends many hours counselling people ready to face the judicial system and its wrath and, yet, were you to judge this feisty and passionate woman by her appearance you'd be more inclined to believe she was a herbal alchemist than a woman who was compelled to compile a book that delves into why women kill.
Contrary to the images that fill your mind after succumbing to the disturbing, compelling and shocking anthology, The Thing She Loves. Why Women Kill, Greenwood exudes no trace of screeching banshee or Queen pregnant dog howling lustily for the blood of men. In fact, she is the antithesis of such a depraved figure, instead the epitome of earth mother, bohemian and literary doyen of fire and ice.
Beneath a halo of ochre curls, and with her cat purring softly to her touch she is the advocator of all that is woman. Her small, pursed lips pause and suddenly the comfort and intimacy of home is banished. "I don't do murder cases but I often see and hear these women in the cells. I remember this one woman who was in the cell. She had murdered her husband with a shotgun, and I walked in, and she seemed to be so relieved. So I said to her 'How are you feeling? Can I get you anything?' And she said, 'I'm alright. It doesn't matter what happens to me, he's not gonna do it again.'
"I asked her why she had killed her husband and she said: 'He tried to rape my daughter. So I shot him'. I asked her how she felt now and she said 'Alone. It's lovely!' "
Greenwood doesn't mince words and refuses to soften the blow of the brutal and horrific truth. She stares and does not flinch, as she recounts yet another tale - only one of many - of a woman and victim whose wounds did not always bleed physically. Broad-shouldered, yet not weighed down by her experiences, this confrontational, uncompromising and inspirational woman has become, over the years, a vessel in which to pour the pain and suffering of others, which ironically has manifested itself in her latest book.
In the preface to The Thing She Loves. Why Women Kill, Greenwood explains: "The concept of this book was broad - to cover everything about women in the media and murder. No study has done this, concentrating on either dry academic treatise or single cases. To compile this ground-breaking book meant that we had to consider not only modern cases, defences and trials, but historical female murderers. Who were they, why did they murder, and how were they seen by their time? The blackest female depravity or the lost innocent? Revenging mothers or wicked pregnant doges? How did the preconceptions of the jury and the press help or harm them?"
Employing writers, barristers, art and cultural historians versed in the 19th century, founders of Domestic Violence Services and University lecturers such as Sue Turnbull, Lucy Sussex, Nanette Rogers, Juliet Peers, Jill Julius Matthews, Patricial Easteal, Barbara Creed and Joanna Bernadette Brodie, The Thing She Loves. Why Women Kill delivers in essay form a hard-hitting, well-balanced and compelling chronicle of what drove many women throughout history and the mythological realms to murder.
"The reason why I choose other authors to contribute was because I wanted everybody else's opinion," she says. "I don't think I have a natural talent for preaching, and I didn't think my opinion was important enough to write a book about, and I wanted to look at everything to do with women murderers because they are very rare.
"There was a rush of movies at the time we were writing this book. There was Basic Instinct, Fatal Attraction, The Hand That Rocks The Cradle and there was a rash of female murder books and suddenly you've got female murderers portrayed as the Goddess Kali, dancing on dead bones with a handful of heads. You don't get women murderers like that, apart from one possible disputed woman in America called Tracy Wurnos. Women just aren't serial killers," she exclaims, as a stain of crimson flushes her cheeks.
She is at loss as to the exact reason why, but does say that, in comparison, the reason why male serial killers pick women is because they are easy to kill, like children. That, and the popularist image of Thelma & Louise - road women forced to kill, was what was grabbing the imagination at the time when film discovered the violence of women.
These are topics that - in more veiled terms - present themselves through Greenwood's published fictional works. They seem a long way from a child who used to sit at the top of an apricot tree writing novels. "It was the most fun I had on my own, and I just dived back into my own mind and created myself a reality and I stayed in it. In fact I swam in it, wallowed in it and had a wonderful time," she remembers.
Her love and fascination of Grecian Gods, mythology, humans and the arcane has caused her to pen an anthology; The Childstone Cycle, The Delphic Women: Cassandra and the sorceress Medea (who was supposed to have murdered her two children and is the proto-type murderess), plus books that traverse science fiction and thrillers.
According to Greenwood, who spent a great deal of time in her early 20s counselling in women's refuges, when women do kill it is not borne of some dark and mythical bloodletting ritual but, simply, because the woman has been battered into submission and feels that she has no other option. Much to her chagrin this is something that the judicial system rarely acknowledges as the 'Battered Woman Syndrome', instead choosing to punish these women.
"It's like that woman who recently got 14 years for murdering her husband. Women do spend longer in gaol for murder than men because they can't use any of the defences that are available," she sighs. "They can't use self-defence if they've killed the guy while he's asleep. Self-defence requires a present threat, and self-defence is a complete defence, whereas they can use provocation, and that reduces murder to manslaughter.
"Female murders are almost always pre-meditated," she continues, "because they've got to be. I mean, if you're half the weight of a man for a start and you haven't got a lot of fighting skill, and you know that if you attack the person and don't succeed then he's going to kill you, you really have to wait until he's drunk or asleep and kill him. Women kill like executioners; they do not muck about. They hit someone five or six times with an axe. They shoot them twice with a shotgun at close range. It's almost as if the creature is a worm, a mythical thing or something and not by ordinary means.
"I haven't actually come across anyone who has shot her husband with a silver bullet yet though ..."
The methods used to end a life that Greenwood discusses are usually put into practice at the end of a period of horrific violent abuse, after rape, being locked in a cupboard, urinated upon, and finally with the promise of death itself, and as she observes in her book, "Things have to be pretty bad for a prison cell to seem like an improvement ..."
Greenwood at core is a modern day demystifier. An icon of non-stereotypical definition. A literary warrior of fire and ice. The daughter of a boxer, who ironically has chosen to use words as her weapon, and who has survived two physical attacks by men lurking in the shadows in the street . It seems on face value nothing is about to stop this feisty and fearless Titan from completing her life's works or ambitions.
Objective, subjective, sobering with a dangerous edge, Kerry Greenwood and The Thing She Loves. Why Women Kill may well become the angry anthem for this generation of women in all of its disturbing and harrowing power.
By JAYNE MARGETTS
SURROUNDED by a library of old and yellowing books, the shine of faded wood and a barrage of theatrical and mystical figures that decorate the top of the kitchen table in her home in Footscray, Melbourne, Kerry Greenwood is lightyears away from the grimy and cold interior of a gaol cell. The novelist, Legal Aid solicitor and voice for women shackled by silence and abuse, spends many hours counselling people ready to face the judicial system and its wrath and, yet, were you to judge this feisty and passionate woman by her appearance you'd be more inclined to believe she was a herbal alchemist than a woman who was compelled to compile a book that delves into why women kill.
Contrary to the images that fill your mind after succumbing to the disturbing, compelling and shocking anthology, The Thing She Loves. Why Women Kill, Greenwood exudes no trace of screeching banshee or Queen pregnant dog howling lustily for the blood of men. In fact, she is the antithesis of such a depraved figure, instead the epitome of earth mother, bohemian and literary doyen of fire and ice.
Beneath a halo of ochre curls, and with her cat purring softly to her touch she is the advocator of all that is woman. Her small, pursed lips pause and suddenly the comfort and intimacy of home is banished. "I don't do murder cases but I often see and hear these women in the cells. I remember this one woman who was in the cell. She had murdered her husband with a shotgun, and I walked in, and she seemed to be so relieved. So I said to her 'How are you feeling? Can I get you anything?' And she said, 'I'm alright. It doesn't matter what happens to me, he's not gonna do it again.'
"I asked her why she had killed her husband and she said: 'He tried to rape my daughter. So I shot him'. I asked her how she felt now and she said 'Alone. It's lovely!' "
Greenwood doesn't mince words and refuses to soften the blow of the brutal and horrific truth. She stares and does not flinch, as she recounts yet another tale - only one of many - of a woman and victim whose wounds did not always bleed physically. Broad-shouldered, yet not weighed down by her experiences, this confrontational, uncompromising and inspirational woman has become, over the years, a vessel in which to pour the pain and suffering of others, which ironically has manifested itself in her latest book.
In the preface to The Thing She Loves. Why Women Kill, Greenwood explains: "The concept of this book was broad - to cover everything about women in the media and murder. No study has done this, concentrating on either dry academic treatise or single cases. To compile this ground-breaking book meant that we had to consider not only modern cases, defences and trials, but historical female murderers. Who were they, why did they murder, and how were they seen by their time? The blackest female depravity or the lost innocent? Revenging mothers or wicked pregnant doges? How did the preconceptions of the jury and the press help or harm them?"
Employing writers, barristers, art and cultural historians versed in the 19th century, founders of Domestic Violence Services and University lecturers such as Sue Turnbull, Lucy Sussex, Nanette Rogers, Juliet Peers, Jill Julius Matthews, Patricial Easteal, Barbara Creed and Joanna Bernadette Brodie, The Thing She Loves. Why Women Kill delivers in essay form a hard-hitting, well-balanced and compelling chronicle of what drove many women throughout history and the mythological realms to murder.
"The reason why I choose other authors to contribute was because I wanted everybody else's opinion," she says. "I don't think I have a natural talent for preaching, and I didn't think my opinion was important enough to write a book about, and I wanted to look at everything to do with women murderers because they are very rare.
"There was a rush of movies at the time we were writing this book. There was Basic Instinct, Fatal Attraction, The Hand That Rocks The Cradle and there was a rash of female murder books and suddenly you've got female murderers portrayed as the Goddess Kali, dancing on dead bones with a handful of heads. You don't get women murderers like that, apart from one possible disputed woman in America called Tracy Wurnos. Women just aren't serial killers," she exclaims, as a stain of crimson flushes her cheeks.
She is at loss as to the exact reason why, but does say that, in comparison, the reason why male serial killers pick women is because they are easy to kill, like children. That, and the popularist image of Thelma & Louise - road women forced to kill, was what was grabbing the imagination at the time when film discovered the violence of women.
These are topics that - in more veiled terms - present themselves through Greenwood's published fictional works. They seem a long way from a child who used to sit at the top of an apricot tree writing novels. "It was the most fun I had on my own, and I just dived back into my own mind and created myself a reality and I stayed in it. In fact I swam in it, wallowed in it and had a wonderful time," she remembers.
Her love and fascination of Grecian Gods, mythology, humans and the arcane has caused her to pen an anthology; The Childstone Cycle, The Delphic Women: Cassandra and the sorceress Medea (who was supposed to have murdered her two children and is the proto-type murderess), plus books that traverse science fiction and thrillers.
According to Greenwood, who spent a great deal of time in her early 20s counselling in women's refuges, when women do kill it is not borne of some dark and mythical bloodletting ritual but, simply, because the woman has been battered into submission and feels that she has no other option. Much to her chagrin this is something that the judicial system rarely acknowledges as the 'Battered Woman Syndrome', instead choosing to punish these women.
"It's like that woman who recently got 14 years for murdering her husband. Women do spend longer in gaol for murder than men because they can't use any of the defences that are available," she sighs. "They can't use self-defence if they've killed the guy while he's asleep. Self-defence requires a present threat, and self-defence is a complete defence, whereas they can use provocation, and that reduces murder to manslaughter.
"Female murders are almost always pre-meditated," she continues, "because they've got to be. I mean, if you're half the weight of a man for a start and you haven't got a lot of fighting skill, and you know that if you attack the person and don't succeed then he's going to kill you, you really have to wait until he's drunk or asleep and kill him. Women kill like executioners; they do not muck about. They hit someone five or six times with an axe. They shoot them twice with a shotgun at close range. It's almost as if the creature is a worm, a mythical thing or something and not by ordinary means.
"I haven't actually come across anyone who has shot her husband with a silver bullet yet though ..."
The methods used to end a life that Greenwood discusses are usually put into practice at the end of a period of horrific violent abuse, after rape, being locked in a cupboard, urinated upon, and finally with the promise of death itself, and as she observes in her book, "Things have to be pretty bad for a prison cell to seem like an improvement ..."
Greenwood at core is a modern day demystifier. An icon of non-stereotypical definition. A literary warrior of fire and ice. The daughter of a boxer, who ironically has chosen to use words as her weapon, and who has survived two physical attacks by men lurking in the shadows in the street . It seems on face value nothing is about to stop this feisty and fearless Titan from completing her life's works or ambitions.
Objective, subjective, sobering with a dangerous edge, Kerry Greenwood and The Thing She Loves. Why Women Kill may well become the angry anthem for this generation of women in all of its disturbing and harrowing power.