Skip to main content

The Maul and the Pear Tree and Society's Fascination with Crime

The Maul and the Pear Tree is an account of the Ratcliffe Highway Murders of 1811 written by P.D. James. She wrote the book in 1971, exactly 160 years after the crimes took place. The Ratcliffe Highway Murders involve two separate break-ins and murders that happened 12 days apart. The first victims were a young couple Timothy and Celia Marr, and their just months-old baby. The second victims were a pub owner named John Williamson, his wife Elizabeth, and their servant Bridget Anna Harrington. The principal subject for the murders, a man named John Williams, seemingly had no connection to the families. He was declared guilty after he committed suicide by hanging in his cell. 

As we can see from this poster, the language used when talking about a crime was much different than the language we use today! However, our attitudes towards murderers and unsolved crimes seems to be the same. Lynchings, for example, used to be public events and seen as entertainment. While we may not take it to such extremes in modern times, society still has a strange fascination with murder. For the past five or so years, I've noticed an increase of interest in serial killers and crimes from people of all ages. Documents following serial killers are among the most popular media on Netflix, and I feel they're sometimes even romanticized. Remember when teenagers were talking about how they were so attracted to Ted Bundy and Jeffery Dahmer? Again, this might be slightly different than how people felt during the Ratcliff Highway Murders. But I think that even the fact that true crime exists as a genre shows that society has some sort of fascination with violent crimes, especially if we can conspire about them in some way. The Maul and The Pear Tree shows that P.D. James was really fascinated with the Ratcliff Highway Murders of 1811, and was possibly even more focused on the murderer himself. On Murder Considered as One of the Fine Arts by Thomas De Quincey also talks about the Ratcliff Highway Murders. He examines the point of view from which people almost have an appreciation for murderous crimes and how the murderer is viewed by society. Overall, I think it's very interesting to consider how our modern society romanticizes criminals such as serial killers, and how this opinion has developed over time. 


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Fiction, Crime, and Empire

Fiction, Crime, and Empire by Jon Thomson was a pretty useful tool when thinking about the essay. It explores the nature of crime fiction, describing how it tells the story of a real crime but in a slightly modified way. We view these true crime stories as non-fiction, but are there elements of fiction within them? He says something happens similarly when crimes are reported through the media, it almost seems like they're run through some sort of filter. In his video lecture where he talks about Fiction, Crime, and Empire, Dr. Reed talks about how our interest in crime raises the more knowledge we have about that crime or criminal. Overall, the article observes how criminals are viewed in various mediums and the difference in how we view fiction and non fiction stories about murder. 
Post a Comment
Read more

Essay Idea

After reading The Maul and the Pear Tree and beginning to watch Sherlock on Netflix, I had a good idea for an essay topic. I decided that I would write about society's fascination with crime and how it has advanced or changed through the years. I started off by talking about how death has always been romanticized in literature. Lots of Emily Dickinson poems have death as a theme, and the same goes for Edgar Allan Poe. Although I think death and dying was handled differently over one hundred years ago, certain people still seem to have a fixation on the idea. The focus of my paper would trace today's fascination with serial killers and unsolved mysteries to the idea of death as it was hundreds of years ago.  Poets like Emily Dickinson almost romanticized the idea of death, regarding it as a peaceful experience. This contrasts heavily with how death is portrayed in modern media. Death is now the most tragic thing that can happen to our favorite characters in movies and T.V. shows...
Post a Comment
Read more