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A review by notlikethebeer
The Five: The Untold Lives of the Women Killed by Jack the Ripper by Hallie Rubenhold
adventurous
challenging
dark
emotional
reflective
sad
medium-paced
4.0
As someone deeply interested in critical true crime, feminism, and denied victimhoods, this has been on my to-read list for ages - and I would say that, for the most part, it delivered! Prior to reading this, I knew next to nothing about Jack the Ripper, other than that he killed sex workers. Evidently, that's just not true, as this book so excellently explained. I really appreciated getting to know each of the women, learning about the facets of their lives in a way that victims are so often denied. I'm not much of a historian, so I also really appreciated the extent to which the author contextualised and explained the features of the time.
Reading The Five is really difficult. At each decision each woman makes, you want to cry out, to warn them off. As well, reading about the challenges they faced is incredibly hard when knowing where their stories will ultimately play out.
I do think I'm a bit conflicted about the way that the deaths themselves were approached. It was the underlying aim to provide agency and narrative, rather than focusing on their deaths, and so it's understandable that the actual deaths were somewhat glossed over. At the same time, those deaths are (tragically, horrifically, awfully) what made the women known to us today. More importantly, those deaths were part of their stories. I wonder whether removing the women from the narratives of their deaths is, in a way, another way of removing agency? I don't know.
I would also probably have appreciated a bit more reflexivity. There was some of this, but I think it could have been expanded upon further. It's not a coincidence or accident that the women continue to be known as sex workers: there is so much room for exploring the function of this. Similarly, so much of what was featured in this book was conjecture: "would" and "should" were used so much. It would have been useful I think to explore how many gaps there are, and what we can understand of this. And, whilst Jack the Ripper was intentionally not the focus of this book, I wonder what we can make of the assumption that there could only have been one killer, what that might mean. Then again: what is an important book if not one that provokes further questions?
Reading The Five is really difficult. At each decision each woman makes, you want to cry out, to warn them off. As well, reading about the challenges they faced is incredibly hard when knowing where their stories will ultimately play out.
I do think I'm a bit conflicted about the way that the deaths themselves were approached. It was the underlying aim to provide agency and narrative, rather than focusing on their deaths, and so it's understandable that the actual deaths were somewhat glossed over. At the same time, those deaths are (tragically, horrifically, awfully) what made the women known to us today. More importantly, those deaths were part of their stories. I wonder whether removing the women from the narratives of their deaths is, in a way, another way of removing agency? I don't know.
I would also probably have appreciated a bit more reflexivity. There was some of this, but I think it could have been expanded upon further. It's not a coincidence or accident that the women continue to be known as sex workers: there is so much room for exploring the function of this. Similarly, so much of what was featured in this book was conjecture: "would" and "should" were used so much. It would have been useful I think to explore how many gaps there are, and what we can understand of this. And, whilst Jack the Ripper was intentionally not the focus of this book, I wonder what we can make of the assumption that there could only have been one killer, what that might mean. Then again: what is an important book if not one that provokes further questions?
Content Warnings
Graphic: Sexual violence and Murder