Reviews tagging 'Miscarriage'

The Five: The Lives of Jack the Ripper's Women by Hallie Rubenhold

46 reviews

funsizesteffi1104's review against another edition

dark emotional informative sad tense medium-paced

5.0

This was the first book I have read that has solely focused on the people and not on the crime/murder. It was very emotional and hard to read at times reading what the characters faced knowing how they would die.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Addiction and Alcoholism

Moderate: Trafficking, Child death, Miscarriage, Death, Murder, and Child abuse

shelbyslifer's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional sad tense medium-paced

4.75

This has to be the best book to date on this case that has transfixed the world for over a century. Instead of information on the crimes that are infamous by now, Rubenhold instead focuses on the LIFE of these women and bringing them the humanity that they deserve. These women deserve the truth to their stories; not just for their tragic ends to be gawked at and Rubenhold highlights this PERFECTLY. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Alcoholism

Moderate: Abandonment, Miscarriage, Terminal illness, Alcohol, Murder, Sexism, Child death, Classism, Death, Misogyny, Child abuse, Addiction, and Domestic abuse

Minor: Antisemitism and Trafficking

annamorgan27's review against another edition

dark emotional informative slow-paced

3.5

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death, Domestic abuse, Terminal illness, Death of parent, Infidelity, Misogyny, Addiction, Alcoholism, Alcohol, Pregnancy, Child death, Forced institutionalization, Miscarriage, Murder, and Physical abuse

Moderate: Trafficking, Sexism, Sexual assault, Sexual content, and Violence

violetturtledove's review against another edition

challenging emotional informative reflective sad medium-paced

5.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Addiction and Alcoholism

Moderate: Classism, Death of parent, Mental illness, Sexism, Domestic abuse, Grief, Miscarriage, and Pregnancy

Minor: Child death, Trafficking, and Physical abuse

jocelyn_rivas's review against another edition

dark emotional informative reflective sad medium-paced

4.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Alcohol

Minor: Miscarriage and Sexual assault

vixenreader's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional informative reflective sad tense medium-paced

4.75

It is good to see the victims of Jack the Ripper as human beings instead of faceless statistics to be gawked at. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death of parent, Death, Domestic abuse, Emotional abuse, Miscarriage, Murder, Physical abuse, Alcoholism, Misogyny, Toxic relationship, Violence, Addiction, Alcohol, Body shaming, Mental illness, Sexism, Sexual harassment, Sexual content, Sexual assault, Child death, and Sexual violence

Moderate: Forced institutionalization, Grief, Trafficking, Gun violence, Infidelity, Medical content, Injury/Injury detail, Medical trauma, and Rape

Minor: Racism, Gore, and Xenophobia

There is a lot of talk about the abuse within the workhouses and dissolving of familial dynamics.

walkie_check's review against another edition

dark emotional informative sad medium-paced

4.5

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Alcoholism, Domestic abuse, Abandonment, Addiction, Alcohol, Classism, Drug abuse, Emotional abuse, Sexism, and Toxic relationship

Minor: Violence, Sexual harassment, Sexism, Police brutality, Physical abuse, Misogyny, Infidelity, Forced institutionalization, Trafficking, Religious bigotry, Miscarriage, Kidnapping, and Child death

vasha's review against another edition

informative reflective sad fast-paced

5.0

This is a rather extraordinary book, and also a sad, almost depressing one. Why were writers, and many police, in 1888 certain that the five women murdered in Whitechapel were prostitutes? That's a question that Rubenhold, while demonstrating that at least three of them could not fit any possible definition of "prostitute," goes into in some detail (at much less length, in her angry final chapter, she considers the unsavory cultural factors which make Jack the Ripper's image as a killer of prostitutes a quasi-heroic one to this day). What it comes down to, as I interpreted it, is that in the Victorian upper- and middle-class mind, in the misogynist mind, classifying a woman as simply "a prostitute" was a way of ceasing to think about her at all: a woman's value resting on the foundation of the purity and "guardedness" of her sexuality, a woman whose sexuality was regarded as "public" had no basis on which to be valued at all, and it was easy to regard all those placed in this category as undifferentiated, and think that the details of their lives really didn't matter. And, as a corollary to "prostitution" being regarded as ultimate unvalued condition, all women who were outside social approval for any reason (having left their husband, being disorderly on the streets, whatever) were lumped into a single category to which the term "prostitute" could be applied (although the police were more cautious about the use of the term since they had a legal definition and standards of proof to adhere to, and knew that that definition would only fit a limited number of women). But the thought-stopping effect of creating a mental category of "common prostitutes" means that people in 1888, and (shamefully) since, did not need to consider the murdered women as individual lives, did not need to see them as human beings as familiar as the ones they personally knew, could leave them as props in a tableau for gawking fascination. This is just as unjust to women who did do sex work as to those who didn't: whichever was true of each of the five women in this book, Hallie Rubenhold has set out to at last do justice to her as an individual, as a personality, as a person who made choices and did far, far more over the course of her life than be on the streets of Whitechapel at one moment which put her name in the newspapers.

Beyond this fundamental wrongdoing, what I found depressing about The Five was that before these five women ended up in direst poverty and squalor in Whitechapel, each led a life quite different from the others. One was raised in a poor working-class neighborhood in London, one in the quarters of an elite cavalry regiment, one on a farm in Sweden, one in a family of skilled tinworkers of the industrial Midlands, and one (perhaps) in a well-to-do family in Wales. Some of them married, some didn't; one rose  to nearly middle-class status; some worked in domestic service, but another was an itinerant ballad-hawker, and still another was in the elegant upper ranks of the sex trade; they all experienced periods of a much better life than what they lived in their final years, but what that consisted of was different in each case. The factors that brought them to adversity were equally varied, but putting them all together paints a picture of an interwoven system of social stratification and patriarchy that could and did all too easily crush women. Annie Chapman, who tried very hard for respectability, fared no better than Kate Eddowes, who boldly flouted society. Reading about these different lives all leading to the same place has made it hard, for the moment, for me to believe in happy endings in Victorian fiction because I'm feeling like these women weren't unlucky, but rather those who lived in peace were the remarkably lucky ones.

On a side note, I've read the graphic novel From Hell (which I can't recommend) and its author, in the course of thinking he's portraying the women of Whitechapel sympathetically, states that they were all prostitutes because that was the only job they could (were allowed to) do. How wrong he was, and what a superficial thinker! I'll leave it to readers of "The Five" to learn the wide variety of expedients that they turned to in order to get each day's food, and hopefully a bed each night; they were determined, experienced, and ingenious, and what's more they had the generous assistance of others in the same plight, returning the favor when they happened to have an extra penny.

I can highly recommend the audiobook, superbly read by Louise Brealey; the print version is also worthwhile for its illustrations and footnotes. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Child death, Chronic illness, Misogyny, and Alcoholism

Moderate: Medical content, Murder, Pregnancy, Infertility, Physical abuse, Terminal illness, Classism, Death of parent, Domestic abuse, Forced institutionalization, Medical trauma, Miscarriage, Sexual harassment, and Trafficking

Minor: Grief, Mental illness, and Sexual violence

qqjj's review against another edition

dark informative sad slow-paced

3.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Murder, Sexual violence, Stalking, Miscarriage, Child death, Chronic illness, and Alcoholism

gattolinos_nerdy_nook's review against another edition

informative reflective slow-paced

4.5

I love learning about history, and listening to this book is no exception. 
I found myself lost in the past listening to each woman's life and how much hardship she had to go through, and at the same time getting a glimpse into the 19th century London.
Learning more about the everyday living of the working class, opposed to the high society that has been better documented and preserved over the years, was a new outlook on what the 19th century expected of society and what support was offered to them.

I found myself talking to anyone who would listen to me about this book, and would recommend it to anyone who likes learning about the 19th century history.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Alcoholism and Alcohol

Moderate: Sexual content, Death, Pregnancy, Violence, and Toxic relationship

Minor: Infertility, Physical abuse, Grief, Miscarriage, and Murder