KnitAFett reviewed The Five by Hallie Rubenhold
An important book with a purpose, but still too much conjecture.
4 stars
The overall intent of this book was to re-humanize the victims of Jack the Ripper. This was definitely needed since the victims have been completely overshadowed with our obsession with the Ripper himself. Rubenhold does succeed in a sense with this attempt, but the biggest issue is that there's still far too many gaps that are attempted to be filled in with (educated) guesses. It is clarified when something is assumed and not fact, but it takes away from the initial claim of the book.
Rubenhold starts off stating that the victims were not prostitutes and deserve to have their honor cleared up. But the reality is that almost all were prostitutes at some point, but they were not believed to have been prostitutes when their lives were taken from them. There is a heavy emphasis on how skewed the mentalities were towards women during the time frame, and …
The overall intent of this book was to re-humanize the victims of Jack the Ripper. This was definitely needed since the victims have been completely overshadowed with our obsession with the Ripper himself. Rubenhold does succeed in a sense with this attempt, but the biggest issue is that there's still far too many gaps that are attempted to be filled in with (educated) guesses. It is clarified when something is assumed and not fact, but it takes away from the initial claim of the book.
Rubenhold starts off stating that the victims were not prostitutes and deserve to have their honor cleared up. But the reality is that almost all were prostitutes at some point, but they were not believed to have been prostitutes when their lives were taken from them. There is a heavy emphasis on how skewed the mentalities were towards women during the time frame, and a lot of the romanticizing of that era is quickly pushed aside due to the stark honesty of what women were treated like.
It's an important conversation to have and I'm glad that Rubenhold gave it her best attempt. Sadly, there's just no way to clear up any of the gaps without making assumptions.
