Making Women Visible: Gender, Race, and Crime in Nineteenth-Century America

This chapter evaluates the historiography of women, gender, race, and crime in nineteenth-century America. Organized around the discussion of six different categories of crimes-infanticide; abortion; sex work; rape; homicide; and intimate violence-the chapter argues that the operation of gender in relation to the history of crime in nineteenth-century America only became visible as scholars uncovered the histories of females as both perpetrators and victims of crime. Finding female criminals initially proved challenging for historians because of limited archival sources: an archival absence or silencing produced by prevailing nineteenth-century gendered stereotypes that meant white women-in particular-were less likely to be tried or sentenced for criminal activity than men. Paying close attention to overlapping issues of race, class, region, and sexuality, the chapter provides an overview of the broad range of work scholars have completed since the 1970s in order to paint a fuller picture of the gendered and racialized criminal system in nineteenth-century America. The chapter concludes by highlighting the importance of recent historiography in relation to the nineteenth-century gendered and racialized carceral state, and makes suggestions for further research.