{"id":4258,"date":"2011-03-21T09:00:46","date_gmt":"2011-03-21T09:00:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.badreputation.org.uk\/?p=4258"},"modified":"2011-03-21T09:00:46","modified_gmt":"2011-03-21T09:00:46","slug":"an-alphabet-of-feminism-22-v-is-for-vitriol","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/badreputation.org.uk\/2011\/03\/21\/an-alphabet-of-feminism-22-v-is-for-vitriol\/","title":{"rendered":"An Alphabet of Feminism #22: V is for Vitriol"},"content":{"rendered":"
V<\/h6>\n

VITRIOL<\/h2>\n

Heaven has no rage like love to hatred turned,
\nNor hell a fury like a woman scorned.<\/p>\n

William Congreve, The Mourning Bride <\/strong>(1697)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This Corrosion.<\/h3>\n

Vitriol is more properly known by its scientific name: sulphuric acid<\/em>. Or additionally, ‘Any of various sulphates of metallic elements, especially ferrous sulphate.’ The only reason I get to do it for V is because the late c13th had a rather fanciful approach to science (no offence guys), and dubbed this chemical vitriol<\/em>, from the Latin vitreus <\/em>(= ‘of glass, glassy’). Cos, in certain states, sulphuric acid <\/em>looks ‘glassy’. Geddit?? Ahem. Actually, there’s nothing whimsical about vitriol <\/em>in its everyday life: it’s extremely corrosive (hi, GCSE Chemistry), and has an exothermic reaction with water, basically meaning it dehydrates anything it comes into contact with… but then liberates extra heat through the very process of reacting with water, causing more burns. Nasty.<\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

\"A<\/a>

Catherine de Medici, attributed to Francois Clouet, c.1555<\/p><\/div>\n

Of course,\u00a0like its sibling term acid, vitriol <\/em>is also a lovely little example of a word whose literal and figurative meanings have almost equal prominence in modern English. Thus, around 1769, vitriol <\/em>started\u00a0meaning ‘Acrimonious, caustic or scathing speech, criticism or feeling’ and \u2013 naturally \u2013 this sense was in figurative relation to sulphuric acid’s ‘corrosive’ qualities. These are the same corrosive properties that made sulphuric acid every murderer’s friend throughout criminal history \u2013 every Wikipedia fan given to perverse procrastination <\/span>knows about John George Haigh, the Acid Bath Murderer<\/a>, who dissolved the bodies of his victims in a bath full of acid (but was eventually dobbed in by a couple of stray gallstones and part of a denture)… Shudder.<\/p>\n

My pain, your thrill.<\/h3>\n

Anyway, vitriol<\/em> has apparently been around since ancient times, but came into prominence during the late c19th, owing to its use as a cleaning product. Of course, since it was suddenly considered fine for trying at home, it was easily purchased at your local chemist by every housewife on her weekly shop.<\/span><\/p>\n

In this context, I’ve always thought of vitriol <\/em>as a pendant to arsenic<\/em>, a household poison used for pest-control, cosmetics and\u00a0suicide (if you’re French, bourgeois and in a Flaubert novel<\/a>). Particularly suggestible Victorian women would mix this one with chalk and vinegar to improve their complexion, with occasionally fatal consequences for their hapless spouses<\/a>.\u00a0History is correspondingly full of tales of malevolent arsenic-armed females, including the eighteenth-century\u00a0Mary Blandy<\/a>, who\u00a0put it in her father’s tea so she could marry her lover. (In a little pendant of my own: she continued to take tea<\/a> herself in prison \u2013 and to receive visitors for tea \u2013 apparently unencumbered by squeamishness, or the leg-irons<\/a> she had to wear as a murderess on death row).<\/p>\n

\"A<\/a>

Vitriol throwing in Le Petit Journal - image from http:\/\/theatredamned.blogspot.com\/<\/p><\/div>\n

These cases are part of a long tradition of female poisoners going back to Catherine de Medici<\/a> and the Emperor Augustus’ wife\u00a0Livia<\/a>, both politically powerful women who were the subject of (probably apocryphal) rumours of poisonous ingenuity. Livia supposedly killed Augustus by poisoning figs that were still on the tree (the last in a line of such crimes, if you like a bit of\u00a0I, Claudius<\/a><\/strong>.\u00a0As everyone should.) and that old gossip-monger Alexandre Dumas<\/a> describes how Catherine de Medici used to poison casual household objects \u2013 ranging from books and gloves to lipsticks \u2013 to relieve herself of Inconveniences who just happened to be breathing.<\/p>\n

The logic behind this tradition seems clear enough: unaccustomed to the brutalities of war and macho posturing, the female murderer is nonetheless skilled in the arts of household management, food preparation and cosmetics. Her arsenal is correspondingly domestic, and widespread reporting of female poisoners presumably relates to a kind of fear of the unknowably deadly potential of the home (and all it represents), not to mention the oft-observed ‘fact’ that the female of the species will tend towards silent attack, backstabbing and general wiliness when settling her battles. The bitch<\/a>!\u00a0Thus, like vitriol<\/em>, poison <\/em>too\u00a0has a transferred sense: to be\u00a0poisonous <\/em>is to be\u00a0‘deeply malicious, malevolent’ \u2013 ‘sly’ \u2013 in a way which is almost antonymic to simple ‘brutality’.<\/p>\n

Don’t look back in anger.<\/h3>\n

But in the late 1800s something changed, and there was an apparent epidemic of\u00a0vitriol throwing<\/em> in addition to arsenic poisoning\u00a0\u2013 <\/em>so much so, that it got its own verb: to vitriolize <\/em>was to ‘throw sulphuric acid at a person with intent to injure’. Thankfully, this verb is now ‘rare’ (although on this, see more below), but its usage was overwhelmingly nineteenth-century. Moreover,\u00a0a cursory look at newspaper records reveals these were\u00a0overwhelmingly perceived to be\u00a0female crimes<\/a> against an\u00a0erstwhile lover <\/a>or a rival. A ‘crime of passion’, in fact, in a way that poisoning (slow and subtle) is not.\u00a0My pal Stewart<\/a> has recently started resurrecting the Parisian Grand Guignol<\/strong>, a Parisian theatre of horror whose depiction of acid-throwing was only one of many acts of mutilation presented onstage between 1897-1962, and I’m quoting him quoting Anne-Louise Shapiro<\/a>:<\/p>\n

In the 1880s, vitriol began to acquire the symbolic associations traditionally linked to poison;\u00a0l\u2019empoisonneuse<\/em> was joined by a new rhetorical (and actual) figure, the\u00a0vitrioleuse<\/em>. […]\u00a0Women who were dangerous through their very domesticity \u2013 who transformed the ordinary and the womanly into the menacing – underscored not only female duplicity but male dependency.<\/p>\n

Anne-Louise Shapiro, Breaking the Codes: Female Criminality in fin-de-siecle Paris<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The Grand Guignol<\/a> play La Baisir dans la Nuit <\/strong>hinges around a disfigured acid victim exercising (literal) eye-for-an-eye revenge on the lover responsible for his wretched state. This sort of thing is perhaps to be expected in a ‘theatre of horror’, but vitriol throwing<\/em> also appears in the broadly passion-free Sherlock Holmes stories, most fully in the Adventure of the\u00a0Illustrious Client <\/strong>(1924)\u00a0where the crime in question is perpetrated by a Fallen Woman on her Base Seducer \u2013 over\u00a0ten years after the frequency of cases had prompted\u00a0calls to make the purchase of vitriol more difficult<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Anyway, this ‘Kitty Winter’ is full of vitriol <\/em>of both kinds: as Watson puts it, ‘there was an intensity of hatred in her white, set face and her blazing eyes such as woman seldom and man never can attain’, and her hysterical<\/a> ranting and raving against the ‘instrument of her demise’ is \u2013 throughout the story \u2013 placed in opposition to the calm and aristocratic air of her Don Juan’s next victim. Throughout the story it is made clear that vitriol throwing <\/em>is the sort of thing possible only for a woman full of a special kind of fury \u2013 and, as Watson makes clear, that fury is something ‘man never can attain’. The lambs.<\/p>\n

The interesting thing here, of course, is the transition from silent, wily domestic\u00a0poisons<\/em> to public acid attacks that hinge around the old adage that ‘Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned’ (a misquote from Congreve\u00a0that endures to this day<\/a>). This, of course, is a woman armed with\u00a0vitriol <\/em>of one kind or another, and the idea was clearly much-repeated, because by the mid-century we also had the word\u00a0vitriolic<\/em>, meaning… well… ‘like vitriol’. That said, it is frequently unclear whether this is vitriol <\/em>in a literal or figurative sense:\u00a0in 1919 the Sarah Palin of the nineteenth century, Mary Kilbreth (President of the American National Association to Oppose Woman Suffrage), questioned Emmeline Pankhurst’s patriotism on the grounds that Pankhurst and the Suffragettes had led a ‘reign of terror’ that involved ‘bombs, kerosene and vitriol<\/em> throwing<\/a>‘, but whether she meant words or household cleaner\u00a0remains tantalisingly unclear.<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, for many around the world today\u00a0vitriol <\/em>is all too literal. This article has been interested in exploring the criminal female in history but \u2013 in the UK and abroad \u2013\u00a0acid attacks are still common, particularly (but not exclusively) as part of a culture of ‘honour violence’ directed against women. While it would be disingenuous to suggest exclusivity on either side, it does seem that these are increasingly male-on-female attacks in contrast to the apparent gender-split in the nineteenth century.\u00a0This article<\/a> has a rather good summary of the current situation, and recommends places you can find out more, including the Acid Survivors Trust<\/a>.
\n<\/a><\/a>\"A<\/a><\/p>\n

NEXT WEEK: W is for Widow<\/strong><\/p>\n