Female Criminals In Victorian England

With the development of industrialization in Victorian Era, The powerful middle class not only created the age values, but also formed a different viewpoint on women. In their eyes, 'Angles in house' was the ideal women image. Though their powerful ideology, they promoted the standards of 'Angles in house' and tried to make it become the behavior standards abided by women consciously. The most important characteristics of 'Angles in house' were strict behavior standards and the stern gender distinctions. Largely, it was the strict behavior standards and the stern gender distinctions that impacted the definitions, attitudes, interpretations and corrections of female criminals.In this era, female criminals not only violated the law, but also disobeyed the female behavior criterions defined by the middle class's viewpoint of women, so they suffered more severe accusation. However, female crime in this era was very rampant, over a fifth of those convicted of crime were women. Facing this ambivalent phenomenon, sociologists and criminologists responsed positively. They put forward several interpretations for female crime. During this era, dominant interpretations for the female crime were: ecological interpretation, moral interpretation, biological interpretation and costs of industrialization. Those interpretations were based on the middle class's viewpoint of women. In addition, women viewpoint of middle class impacted the formulation of law as well as the attitudes of police and court to crime...