Analysis Of The Gilded Age

The Gilded Age in the United States took place is the late 19th century, from 1879 to 1899. The term for this period came into use during the 1920s and 30s. Consequential from writer Mark Twain 's 1873 The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today, it ridiculed an era of serious social problems masked by a thin gold gilding. These were the years that America challenged the implications of modernization. Old America was fading and new America was emerging transitioning America to be dynamic, captivating, and energetic. Crimes during this period began to rise. The rise in criminal activity was tied to issues of political corruption, urbanization, mass immigration, and economic rivalry among many immigrant groups. Although murders and homicides began to decrease,

James Gilligan’s article, "A Modest Proposal to Universalize the Insanity Defense and Replace Prisons and Punishment with Treatment and Education." thoroughly states that the entire prison system needs to be both abolished and replaced with a more developed approach to prevent violence. The author uses numerous metaphors to describe the immediate need to change the plan in which violence stems from. People who commit crimes or partake in violent behaviors are likely to be diagnosed as having a mental illness, having various personality disorders, or violence due to alcohol or drug abuse. As long as one appears to be a threat to the public, they are in need of treatment. Also, the most appropriate and necessary response to ferocious behavior is not punishment, in prison but rather treatment and education. Evidently, the stance Gilligan took on the argument is that people should not be punished for crimes they have committed. Gillian mentions that the opposing side may argue that people who commit violent acts or crimes do not have a sense of morality or knowing right from wrong “The modern prison system was a well-meaning experiment in social engineering that has failed, because it is based on fallacious assumptions. For example, we know by now that punishing people in order to achieve a moral

Hence, her being sentenced to an asylum rather than a prison. Her plea was based upon the fact that she was a mother. Samantha Pegg’s journal, "‘Madness Is a Woman’: Constance Kent and Victorian Constructions of Female Insanity" examines female insanity in depth. More specifically though, it examines the correlation between femininity, homicide and madness from the past to present. Pegg goes on to stating that some people avoid the insanity plea by all means, yet it is clear that insanity was the motive for committing such heinous crimes. In some cases, (such as the Constance Kent case of Victorian female insanity) there is not enough evidence to prove insanity resulting in imprisonment or death sentencing of the defendant. During the Victorian period, there was a social understanding of criminality as an inability to fight temptation. Women were seen as abnormal because of female weaknesses, such as menstruation and pregnancy to the more indefinable ‘weaknesses’ of the female temperament. Pegg demonstrates that people (females in particular), should be properly evaluated before being sentenced to prison for committing a crime for reasons of true insanity. Treatment should be given to people in order to assist them in controlling their emotions and behavior. “The widely held perception of the ‘dangerous classes’ was of those who succumbed easily to temptations due to their