Book Reviews: PAULINE PRIOR, Madness and Murder: Gender, Crime and Mental Disorder in Nineteenth-Century Ireland. Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 2008, pp. 264, ISBN 9780716529385, £19.95 (pbk)
| Date | 01 March 2011 |
| DOI | 10.1177/09646639110200010704 |
| Published date | 01 March 2011 |
| Author | Fiona Hutton |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
Men and Fragmenting enrich the analytical resources available for thinking about
fathers and men generally, challenging scholars in the field to read more widely and to
question their assumptions. The call for deepening scholarly attention to the emotional
dimensions of masculine experience has much to offer ongoing debates not only in the
UK, but also elsewhere. I am thinking of Article 530 in the Civil Code of Que´bec, which
makes it impossible to contest the parentage of a child where ‘uninterrupted possession of
status’ (the sustained performance of a parent–child relationship) confirms the parentage
registered at birth. The Courtof Appeal has recently confirmed that rule’s effects, even in
the era of DNA testing: an established legal paternitysurvives proof that the legal ‘father’
is not the genetic father (Droit de la famille – 09358 2009 QCCA 332). The ensuingpub-
lic debates were typically crude. Commentatorsvilified the unfaithful mother for saddling
her partner with a child who wasn’t ‘his’. Or they vilified the legal father for not cheer-
fully subordinating his hurt feelings to the best interests of the child. The books reviewed
here would not yield a policy prescriptionfor such situations. But their call for taking seri-
ously the contingent subjective experiences of men, especially fathers, offers a path in
such situations towards more textured analysis.
References
Collier R and Sheldon S (eds) (2006) Fathers’ Rights Activism and Legal Reform. Oxford: Hart.
Smart C (2007) Personal Life: New Directions in Sociological Thinking. Cambridge: Polity.
Robert Leckey
McGill University, Canada
PAULINE PRIOR, Madness and Murder: Gender, Crime and Mental Disorder in
Nineteenth-Century Ireland. Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 2008, pp. 264,
ISBN 9780716529385, £19.95 (pbk).
This fascinating and detailed discussion draws on a number of historical sources to
contextualize crime and punishment in Ireland in the nineteenth century. A particu-
lar focus is on the criminal justice response to ‘lunacy’ at this time which echoes
many contemporary debates. The difficulties the criminal justice system had in deal-
ing with mental disorder and ‘criminal lunatics’ is clearly illustrated, as are the pro-
blematic issues related to culpability and punishment in cases of murder,
manslaughter and child-killing. Prior also highlights the gendered dimension sur-
rounding these issues and the often unequal treatment of male and female offenders
within a patriarchal system. However, a more forceful discussion of these gendered
differences with reference to contemporary feminist debates about punishment
would have helped to theoretically frame the arguments contained in this book.
The gendered dimension of violent crime is broadlydiscussed in Chapter 1 where it is
noted that women across jurisdictions and across time commit fewer crimes and fewer
violent crimes than their male counterparts. Prior points to infanticide as an interesting
126 Social & Legal Studies 20(1)
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