The Dangers of Being a Woman

Eliza's character is confronted with the precarious position of women in 1850s society even before the events of the novel take place. We learn immediately that her husband, Peter, who is twenty years her senior, "intended to put it to her, whether she liked it or not, once or twice every day" (5). One of the first glimpses we get of our main character is as someone who is systematically and routinely forced to have sex by her husband, regardless of her feelings or thoughts. Immediately, a central conflict of the novel is set up in the idea that women are completely subservient to men in this society, and their thoughts don't even matter in comparison.

When the murders begin to happen later on in the novel, Eliza runs into societal forces that make it so they continue to go unsolved for...