Analysis Of The Murder Of Helen Jewett

After reading ‘The Murder of Helen Jewett” it gave me insight on how crime in New York City was in the 1830’s and another view on how life for men and women differed. The book starts off talking about Dorcas Doyen famously known as Helen Jewett and how she was highly thought of but then the news comes out of nowhere with several stories about her past some twisted to make her seem as bad as a prostitute who has bounced around a few times could be seen. But her actual story was that she was born in 1814 in Temple, Maine to a regular working family. She lost both of her parents at a young age her mother died when she was at the early ages of her life and he father who was an alcoholic died shortly after her mother. She was put in a home, orphaned

They wanted women to be sanctimonious, which meant they were expected to be devoutly religious. So, in this time prostitution was the last resort, which mean they have reached poverty, shame and abandonment leaves them with nowhere else to turn. But that wasn’t the case for Helen she seen it as her calling and accepted it. Women were expected to get married, then after married they would be then considered property of their husbands. They also were expected to be pure. By pure it was referring to sexual elements and it was not shocking that prostitutes were looked down upon at this time because they lost their purity. holiness was also suggested for men too but was not as strongly enforced. An important thing to note that made the lives different for gender is that even though women were pushed to be as pure as can be all their lives, given directions on how to go about these things, while the men on the other hand were only advised on how to reclaim purity after they had participated in unwholesome acts. Throughout the Murder of Helen Jewett, the image of Richard P. Robinson stayed relatively the same throughout the whole book and even though Helen Jewett was decease her image continues to change due to the fact that she was a