Creating the Public Image of Joanna Dennehy, Essay Example

In February 2014 Joanna Dennehy became the first woman to be sentenced to a whole life term in a British prison (Dodd). Dennehy, who was convicted of multiple murders and other crimes including attempted murder, pleaded guilty to the charges. Over the course of two weeks in early 2013, Dennehy’s crimes captured the attention of British media, as did her subsequent arrest and court proceedings. While Dennehy’s guilty plea subverted the need for a trial, her male accomplices in several of the crimes were tried and given sentences of varying lengths. Throughout these trials, and in the attendant media coverage, Dennehy remained the central figure; it was her transgressions that were considered to be the most shocking, and the image of Dennehy offered by the media was shaped entirely by the way that she defied, and ultimately perverted, the normative expectations for femininity.

While a thorough -or even cursory- examination of the contemporary media as the context in which Joanna Dennehy’s actions were framed would far outstrip the scope of this discussion, it is this context in which Dennehy is known by most people. It is through media representations that Joanna Dennehy, the sadistic, blood-lusting killer has been created; such representations may even be accurate, insofar as they reflect or amplify the words and views of those around her.  What makes Dennehy’s crimes a magnet for media attention, however, is not the nature of the crimes themselves; after all, violent murder is not of itself an entirely unusual occurrence. Nor, for that matter, is it unheard of for a woman to commit murder. Dennehy’s transgressions are subject to such copious media attention solely for the ways that they can be viewed through the normative lens of expected female roles, and as such, allow her to be portrayed as a perversion of those roles.

Dennehy was convicted of the murder of three men, at least two of which were believed to have been targeted by Dennehy at random. Dennehy was captured by police within minutes of the third murder, and almost immediately the media began to shape and define her for public consumption. Video footage of Denney’s booking after her arrest was made public, showing a woman who defied the normative expectations by demonstrating no outward remorse. Experts of varying degrees of credibility were called upon by the media to make diagnoses about Dennehy’s mental and psychological state; in the year between her crimes and her sentencing, similar pronouncements were made by prosecutors, court officials, and other agents of the judicial system. Such descriptions of Dennehy as offered largely by those with neither the access nor the credibility to make such determinations help to shape the public view of Dennehy.

Despite the significance of Dennehy’s legal transgressions, it was her violations of social and cultural taboos that garnered so much attention. Virtually every news story and other examples of media coverage focused exclusively on her gender, contextualizing it as the basis against which to compare her crimes.  Much attention was given in the media to the fact that Dennehy was the mother of two children; lurid headlines about the “Killer Mum” accompanied news stories asking how it was possible that Dennehy could commit murder, as if the very fact of her gender, or the fact that she had give birth, precluded such a possibility. Her crimes were not heinous of themselves; they were heinous because they were committed by an ostensibly remorseless, sadistic female.

Although Dennehy had several male accomplices, including two who helped her move or dispose of bodies and one who accompanied her during two murders and two attempted murders, their participation was explained both by their own lawyers and even prosecutors as resulting from them being “in thrall” to Dennehy (telegraph.uk). During court proceedings, Dennehy was said to have “cast a spell” over these men, ascribing virtually supernatural abilities to her (telegraph.uk). Dennehy’s main accomplice, a man who stands over seven feet tall, was portrayed by in court as being subordinate to Dennehy, and was given a shorter sentence than she was despite his direct involvement in the murders. In order to reinforce the definition of Dennehy as an individual who perverted the normative expectations of femininity or motherhood, the men who assisted her were defined by as having their agency, and their normative masculinity, stripped away by Dennehy.

According to mental health experts who testified during Dennehy’s court proceedings, Dennehy is a paraphiliac who is sexually stimulated by inappropriate triggers (Dodd). The sentencing judge in her case asserted that Dennehy’s “blood lust” drove her to kill (Dodd). Her prosecutor described her as “cruel and calculating” (Dodd). While these and other descriptors are arguably apt, the combined weight of such descriptions, coupled with the public examination of her transgressions in the context of her role as a mother, define Dennehy almost entirely in terms of her gender and the way in which her transgressions serve to pervert the normative expectations of femininity.

What are we to make of the way that Dennehy has been described and defined? It may be that nothing that has been said about her is factually incorrect, yet it seems worth noting the ways that Dennehy’s transgressions are farmed almost entirely in the context of gender. Her crimes are not just shocking because of their sudden violence; they are shocking specifically because they were committed by a woman. In his essay “The Repressive Hypothesis,” Foucalt (307) addresses the way sex and sexuality are contextualized in public discourse, asserting that “one had to speak of it as of a thing to be…managed, inserted into systems of utility, (and) regulated for the greater good.” Dennehy’s transgressions strike at the heart of this utility, challenging the expectations and the demands of society. In this we can find some understanding of why (and even how) Dennehy is publicly defined as she is; by defining her by the ways that she perverts normative expectations, we remember, reinforce and return to those same expectations.

Works cited

Dodd, Vikram. ‘Joanna Dennehy: Serial Killer Becomes First Woman Told By Judge To Die In Jail’. the Guardian. N. p., 2014. Web. 8 Jun. 2014.

Foucault, Michel, and Paul Rabinow. The Foucault Reader. 1st ed. New York: Pantheon Books, 1984. Print.

Telegraph.co.uk,. ”Cruel, Calculating’ Serial Killer Joanna Dennehy Gets Full Life Tariff – Telegraph’. N. p., 2014. Web. 8 Jun. 2014.