Criminal Psychology, Hans Gross [jenna bush book club .txt] 📗

whoever quarrels with women is, as B<o:>rne says, in the condition of a man who must unceasingly polish lights.[1]

 

[1] Several sentences are here omitted.

 

Women have an obstinacy, and it is no easy matter to be passive against it. But in the interest of justice, the part of the wise is not to lose any time by making an exhibition of himself through verbal quarrels with women witnesses. The judge may be thoroughly convinced that his success with the woman may help the case, but such success is very rare, and when he thinks he has it, it is only apparent and momentary, or is merely naive self-deception. For women do like, for the sake of a momentary advantage, to please men and to appear convinced, but the judge for whom a woman does this is in a state that requires consideration.

 

A few more particulars concerning feminine intelligence. They are, however, only indirectly connected with it, and are as unintelligible as the fact that left-handedness is more frequent and color-blindness less frequent among women than among men. If, however, we are to explain feminine intelligence at all we must do so by conceiving that women’s intellectual functioning stops at a definite point and can not pass beyond it.

 

Consider their attitude toward money. However distasteful Mammon may be in himself, money is so important a factor in life itself that it is not unintelligibly spoken of as the “majesty of cold cash.” But to make incorrect use of an important thing is to be unintelligent. Whoever wastes money is not intelligent enough to understand what important pleasures he may provide for himself and whoever hoards it does not know its proper use. Now single women are either hoarders or wasters; they rarely take the middle way and assume the prudence of the housewife, which generally develops into miserliness. This is best observable in the foolish <p 339>

bargaining of women at markets, in their supposing that they have done great things by having reduced the price of their purchase a few cents. Every dealer confirms the fact that the first price he quotes a woman is increased in order to give her a chance to bargain.

But she does not bargain down to the proper price, she bargains down to a sum above the proper price, and she frequently buys unnecessary, or inferior things, simply because the dealer was smart enough to captivate her by allowing reductions. This is indicated in a certain criminal case,[1] in which the huckster-woman asserted that she immediately suspected a customer of passing counterfeit coins because she did not bargain.

 

[1] Chronique des Tribunaux, vol II. Bruxelles 1835.

 

Now this tendency to hoard is not essentially miserliness, for the chief purpose of miserliness is to bring together and to own money; to enjoy merely the look of it. This tendency is an unintelligent attitude toward money, a failure to judge its value and properties.

Now this failure is one of the principal reasons for numerous crimes.

A woman needing money for her thousand several objects, demands it from her husband, and the latter has to provide it without her asking whether he honestly can or not. A wife is said to be uncurious only with regard to the source of her husband’s money. She knows his income, she knows the necessary annual expenses; she can immediately count up the fact that the two are equal—but she calmly asks for more.

 

Of course, I am not referring to the courageous helpmeet who stands by her husband in bearing the burdens of life. With her the criminalist has nothing to do. I mean only those light-headed, pleasure-loving women, who nowadays make the great majority, and that army of “lovers,” who have cost the country a countless number of not unworthy men. The love of women is the key to many a crime, even murder, theft, swindling, and treachery. First, there is the woman’s unintelligible arithmetic, then her ceaseless requirements, finally the man’s surrender to the limit of his powers; then fresh demands, a long period of opposition, then surrender, and finally one unlawful action. From that it is only a step to a great crime. This is the simple theme of the countless variations that are played in the criminal court. There are proverbs enough to show how thoroughly the public understands this connection between love and money.[2]

 

[2] Cf. Lombroso and Ferrero, The Female Offender: Tr. by Morrison. N. Y.

1895.

<p 340>

 

An apparently insignificant feminine quality which is connected with her intelligence is her notorious, “never quite ready.” The criminalist meets this when he is looking for an explanation of the failure of some probably extraordinarily intelligent plan of crime.

Or when a crime occurs which might have been prevented by a step at the right minute, women are always ten minutes behind the time. But these minutes would not be gained if things were begun ten minutes earlier, and once a woman suffers real damage through tardiness, she resolves to be ten minutes ahead of time. But when she does so she fails in her resolution and this failure is to be explained by lack of intelligence. The little fact that women are never quite on time explains many a difficulty.

 

Feminine conservatism is as insignificant as feminine punctuality.

Lombroso shows how attached women are to old things. Ideas, jewelry, verses, superstitions, and proverbs are better retained by women than by men. Nobody would venture to assert that a conservative man must be less intelligent than a liberal. Yet feminine conservatism indicates a certain stupidity, less excitability and smaller capacity for accepting new impressions. Women have a certain difficulty in assimilating and reconstructing things, and because of this difficulty they do not like to surrender an object after having received it. Hence, it is well not to be too free with the more honorable attributes such as piety, love, loyalty, respect to what they have already learned; closer investigation discovers altogether too many instances of intellectual rigidity.

 

In our profession we meet the fact frequently that men pass much more easily from honesty to dishonesty, and vice versa, that they more easily change their habits, begin new plans, etc. Generalizations, of course, can not be made; each case has to be studied on its merits. Yet, even when questions of fact arise, e. g., in searching houses, it is well to remember the distinction. Old letters, real corpora delicti, are much more likely to be found in the woman’s box than in the man’s. The latter has destroyed the thing long ago, but the former may “out of piety” have preserved for years even the poison she once used to commit murder with.

 

Section 74. (b) Honesty.

 

We shall speak here only of the honesty of the sort of women the courts have most to do with, and in this regard there is little to give us joy. Not to be honest, and to lie, are two different things; the latter is positive, the former negative, the dishonest person <p 341>

does not tell the truth, the liar tells the untruth. It is dishonest to suppress a portion of the truth, to lead others into mistakes, to fail to justify appearances, and to make use of appearances. The dishonest person may not have said a single untrue word and still have introduced many more difficulties, confusions and deceptions than the liar. He is for this reason more dangerous than the latter. Also, because his conduct is more difficult to uncover and because he is more difficult to conquer than the liar. Dishonesty is, however, a specially feminine characteristic, and in men occurs only when they are effeminate. Real manliness and dishonesty are concepts which can not be united. Hence, the popular proverb says, “Women always tell the truth, but not the whole truth.” And this is more accurate than the accusation of many writers, that women lie. I do not believe that the criminal courts can verify the latter accusation.

I do not mean that women never lie—they lie enough—

but they do not lie more than men do, and none of us would attribute lying to women as a sexual trait. To do so, would be to confuse dishonesty with lying.

 

It would be a mistake to deal too sternly in court with the dishonesty of women, for we ourselves and social conditions are responsible for much of it. We dislike to use the right names of things and choose rather to suggest, to remain in embarrassed silence, or to blush. Hence, it is too much to ask that this round-aboutness should be set aside in the courtroom, where circumstances make straight talking even more difficult. According to Lombroso,[1]

women lie because of their weaknesses, and because of menstruation and pregnancy, for which they have in conversation to substitute other illnesses; because of the feeling of shame, because of the sexual selection which compels them to conceal age, defects, diseases; because finally of their desire to be interesting, their suggestibility, and their small powers of judgment. All these things tend to make them lie, and then as mothers they have to deceive their children about many things. Indeed, they are themselves no more than children, Lombroso concludes. But it is a mistake to suppose that these conditions lead to lying, for women generally acquire silence, some other form of action, or the negative propagation of error.

But this is essentially dishonesty. To assert that deception, lying, have become physiological properties of women is, therefore, wrong.

According to Lotze, women hate analysis and hence can not distinguish between the true and the false, but then women hate analysis <p 342>

only when it is applied to themselves. A woman does not want to be analyzed herself simply because analysis would reveal a great deal of dishonesty; she is therefore a stranger to thoroughgoing honest activity. But for this men are to blame. Nobody, as Flaubert says, tells women the truth. And when once they hear it they fight it as something extraordinary. They are not even honest with themselves. But this is not only true in general; it is true also in particular cases which the court room sees. We ourselves make honesty difficult to women before the court. Of course, I do not mean that to avoid this we are to be rude and shameless in our conversation with women, but it is certain that we compel them to be dishonest by our round-about handling of every ticklish subject.

Any half-experienced criminal justice knows that much more progress can be made by simple and absolutely open discussion. A highly educated woman with whom I had a frank talk about such a matter, said at the end of this very painful sitting, “Thank God, that you spoke frankly and without prudery—I was very much afraid that by foolish questions you might compel me to prudish answers and hence, to complete dishonesty.”

 

[1] Loco cit.

 

We have led women so far by our indirection that according to Stendthal, to be honest, is to them identical with appearing naked in public. Balzac asks, “Have you ever observed a lie in the attitude and manner of woman? Deceit is as easy to them as falling snow in heaven.” But this is true only if he means dishonesty. It is not true that it is easy for women really to lie. I do not know whether this fact can be proven, but I am sure the feminine malease in lying can be observed. The play of features, the eyes, the breast, the attitude, betrays almost always even the experienced female offender. Now, nothing can reveal the play of her essential dishonesty.

If a man once confesses, he confesses with less constraint than a woman, and he is less likely, even if he is very bad, to take