A prurience about women and murder
The ‘Foxy Knoxy’ case has stirred a deep prurience about women and murder
Why the case of 'Foxy Knoxy has gripped the British psyche'
We have changed as a nation. The liberalisation of the divorce laws means that one no longer needs to kill one’s wife in order to facilitate an extramarital affair. You can just leave and few people, save for your ex-wife, will think any the worse of you for it. Similarly, homosexuality is now not merely legal but to ascribe to it a transgressive status will soon be a criminal offence. There is no requirement in either case for people to reside in a state of desperation - and shame has been pretty much expunged, as a concept, from our vocabulary.
If Orwell were writing today, he would, I suspect, recognise that we still enjoy a sexual connotation to our murders, but that now they should be as depraved and explicit as possible, and the participants - murderer and murderee - young and attractive. The killing of 21-year-old Meredith Kercher, from Coulsdon in Surrey, is a grim and harrowing story and it has dug its claws into the psyche of the British public and, seemingly, is not about to let go. Meredith was enjoying what is known as a ‘gap year’ â” something else with which Orwell would have been unfamiliar â” in the Italian town of Perugia. She was murdered, horribly, with a penknife, in the flat she shared with a slightly younger American girl, Amanda Knox. Ms Knox has been arrested, as has been her Italian boyfriend, Raffaele Sollecito, and a Congolese bar owner called Patrick Lumumba. The Italian police have reported that ‘some sort of sexual activity’ had taken place before Meredith was killed and there have been reports that she was murdered because she declined the invitation to take part in an orgy. All of which was ample to generate a fair amount of press interest back in Britain - blameless and rather attractive British girl killed by sexually depraved foreigners because she would have no part in their shenanigans, and so on.
We are still attempting to come to terms with the plight of another British innocent abroad, Madeleine McCann, of course. The involvement of foreigners, even if they are simply bystanders, always increases the domestic interest in a murder story. And the trope of ‘terrible things happening to our young women abroad’ has become awfully familiar, to the extent that some British columnists are wondering aloud if they should let their daughters venture away from the safe shores of Great Britain, where there are no sexual perverts and orgies never take place.
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Lucan C. Heraclitus
November 15th, 2007 6:46pmThis issue ties feminists up in knots but everybody else understands the need to see women as being above and beyond the worst of excesses of human nature because they have the primary role in the nurturing of children.
Janey
November 15th, 2007 10:35pmThe Erasmus scheme is not about taking a gap year free from study, but about taking part of your university course in another country. The Unfortunate Ms Kercher was studying in Perugia, not holidaying.
cvabunting
November 17th, 2007 10:29amA lot of the comments from readers on Daily Mail stories about this case have deplored the use of the tag 'Foxy Knoxy' and the way that the story is being reported. The prurient details being paraded in the press are merely a reflection on the Dirty Old Man values still prevalent in the Street of Shame.
janie
November 28th, 2007 10:51pmI think too that because there are so few women involved in crimes like these (in direct proportion with men) - it seems even more shocking. No, it's not 'expected' of a woman, nor is it routine for women to be involved in something as violent as this - if it was, there would be hundreds more cases.
Tazia
January 10th, 2008 7:54pmMs Knox was denied her VCCR entitlements, opinion has switched in her favor in the United States. It would appear that she was hit by the Italian police and various witnesses are asking to retract statements. It is possible, perhaps, that the UK perception is colored by circumstances pertaining to UN treaty compliances in the UK. It is no longer possible for Amnesty to go to a female jail in Alabama and say X, Y or Z, because the jail in Alabama will have higher standards than Britain. There is also something else very peculiar about Britain, More US children are sexually victimized via the internet by British teachers than by American teachers. Our FBI are being obliged to keep lips sealed in relation to the 'English disease', and that is the electronic verification that your foxes are far better cotton-wooled than your children.