Reviews tagging 'Grief'

The Five: The Untold Lives of the Women Killed by Jack the Ripper by Hallie Rubenhold

35 reviews

revived_reading's review against another edition

dark emotional informative mysterious reflective sad tense medium-paced

5.0

The way Hallie Rubenhold writes, you can feel every single emotion she tries to convey. From dread to a bit of hope to powerless. 

This book opens your eyes not only to the lives of these 5 women, but to the lives of many, many women in the Victorian era. 

Hallie Rubenhold truly gave back these women their stories and their lives. She gave them the respect they were never given. She gave them justice. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Infidelity, Injury/Injury detail, Toxic relationship, Alcoholism, Grief, Medical content, Pregnancy, and Abandonment

Moderate: Terminal illness, Suicide, Death of parent, Physical abuse, Infidelity, Child death, and Domestic abuse

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

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.

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

rach59r's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional hopeful sad medium-paced

5.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Murder and Sexism

Moderate: Emotional abuse, Grief, Domestic abuse, Alcoholism, Death, Death of parent, and Classism

Minor: Addiction, Child death, Violence, and Classism

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

corriejn's review against another edition

challenging informative reflective sad medium-paced

4.5

A well-written and thoroughly researched accounting of the history and lives of the five Victorian era women who eventually became the presumed victims of the serial killer dubbed Jack the Ripper. The violence that ended each of their lives is not the focus, and is mentioned only in passing as the end of each woman's life. These accounts are representative of the experiences of many non-wealthy women of the time and area-- the precarities of trying to remain out of poverty and destitution, the limited choices available to women and families without financial resources, the living conditions faced in workhouses or the kind of lodging houses available to lower classes-- but provide specifics details of each woman's life. While this book is important in humanizing and dispelling some myths about these murder victims and their lives, I didn't give a higher rating because some of the language and insinuations are a bit outdated (e.g., some of the things mentioned re: sex work, addiction, or poverty/homelessness). Basically, it would have been super progressive like... 10 or 15 years ago. Still worth a read, though.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Misogyny, Alcohol, and Alcoholism

Moderate: Addiction, Domestic abuse, Child death, Miscarriage, Pregnancy, Sexual harassment, and Grief

Minor: Abortion, Murder, Rape, Sexual assault, Sexual violence, and Trafficking

katievh's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional informative reflective sad medium-paced

4.75

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Alcoholism, Misogyny, and Sexism

Moderate: Abandonment, Child death, Violence, Domestic abuse, Trafficking, Sexual assault, Miscarriage, Chronic illness, Death, Grief, Mental illness, and Toxic relationship

Minor: Murder, Death of parent, Infidelity, Infertility, and Terminal illness

liviy0017's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional reflective sad slow-paced

4.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Abandonment, Addiction, Alcohol, Alcoholism, Chronic illness, Death, Domestic abuse, Grief, Murder, Physical abuse, and Violence

Minor: Death of parent, Excrement, Miscarriage, Mental illness, Pregnancy, and Trafficking

rhiannonxgrace's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional informative sad

5.0

What an incredible book. I really enjoy Rubenhold’s writing style and find her to be an easy read, which can’t be said about all historians! This was a rough read, and more than once I had to pause and step away for a little while simply due to the content. But I am so glad I read this. It’s so important to move the focus back on to the womens’ lives and show them as fully fledged people, something that is often discarded when it comes to the Whitechapel murders.

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Abandonment, Abortion, Addiction, Alcohol, Alcoholism, Child abuse, Child death, Death, Death of parent, Domestic abuse, Emotional abuse, Forced institutionalization, Grief, Infidelity, Medical content, Medical trauma, Mental illness, Miscarriage, Murder, Misogyny, Physical abuse, Pregnancy, Rape, Sexual content, Terminal illness, Trafficking, and Violence