Scotch Verdict [electronic resource] : The Real-Life Story That Inspired "The Children's Hour"
Faderman2013
eBook
Find it!
Dame Cumming Gordon, the wealthy and powerful grandmother of the accusing student, advises her friends to remove their daughters from the Drumsheugh boarding school. Within days, the institution is deserted and two women are deprived of their livelihoods.Award-winning author Lillian Faderman recreates the events surrounding this notorious case, which became the basis for Lillian Hellman’s famous play, The Children’s Hour. Reconstructing the libel suit filed by Pirie and Woods, which resulted in a scotch verdict, or a verdict of inconclusive/not proven, Faderman builds a compelling narrative from court transcripts, judge’s notes, witnesses’ contradictory testimony, and the prejudices of the men presiding over the case. Her fascinating portrait documents the social, economic, and sexual pressures that shaped the lives of nineteenth-century women and the issues of class and gender that contributed to their marginalization.
Main title:
Author:
Imprint:
[Place of publication not identified] : Columbia University Press, 2013
Collation:
1 online resource (1 text file)
ISBN:
9780231533249
Language:
English
Subject:
BRN:
2759557