Criminal Man, According to the Classification of Cesare Lombroso

by Gina Lombroso

The first part of this book is devoted to a study of the normal woman, or rather the female of every species, beginning with the lowest strata of the zoölogical world and working upwards through the higher mammals and primitive human races to civilised peoples.

As a result of this study, it is shown that although in the lower species, the female is the superior in intelligence, strength, and longevity, among the higher mammals she is surpassed in strength, intelligence, and beauty by the male, who is developed and perfected by the struggle for the possession of the female; while on the other hand, owing to her maternal functions, the female tends to a perpetuation of her physical and psychic characters; and this prevents variation and evolution.

The same phenomenon is encountered in the human race. After a careful examination of the normal woman (height, weight, brain, nervous system, hair, senses, physiognomy, and intellectual and moral manifestations), the authors arrived at the conclusion that the physical, anatomical, physiological, functional, and sensory characters of the female show a lower degree of variability than those of the male.

In the same way, cases of monstrosity, degeneration, epilepsy, and insanity are less frequent in the female of the human race; and the percentage of genius and criminality is decidedly lower. The examination of the senses showed that the normal human female possesses a lower degree of tactile, olfactory, auditory, and visual sensibility than the male, and also, contrary to the hitherto accepted opinion, a diminished moral and dolorific sensibility. Among savage peoples, the female appears to be less sensitive,—that is, more cruel than the male and more inclined to vindictiveness.

But when we consider woman from the point of view of her maternal functions, her physiological, psychological, and intellectual nature assumes an entirely changed aspect; for maternity is the natural function of the female, the end to which she has been created. Lofty sentiments, complete altruism, and far-sighted intelligence develop all of a sudden when she becomes a mother. Maternity neutralises her moral and physical inferiority, pity extinguishes cruelty, and maternal love counteracts sexual indifference. Maternity stimulates her intelligence and sharpens her senses, explains and exalts those characteristics which have hitherto constituted her inferiority until they become signs of superiority when considered from the point of view of the reproduction of the species.

A lessened sensibility enables woman to bear with greater ease the pains inherent to childbirth; her refractoriness to all kinds of variation—also that of a degenerate nature—serves to correct morbid heredity and to bring back the race, which owes its continuation to her, to its normal state.

Women commit fewer crimes than men; and offenders of the female sex, generally speaking, exhibit fewer degenerate characteristics. This is due in part to the tenacity with which the female adheres to normality, but also to the deviation caused in her criminality by prostitution. The history of this social phenomenon, and an examination of the anatomy and functions of the types representing this variation of criminality show that the prostitute generally exhibits a greater number of degenerate and criminal characters than the ordinary female offender.

Prostitution is therefore the feminine equivalent of criminality in the male, because it satisfies the desire for licence, idleness, and indecency, characteristic of the criminal nature.

In addition to prostitutes and ordinary offenders, who constitute the larger part of female criminality, there exists a small number of born criminals of the female sex, who are more ferocious and terrible even than the male criminal of the same type. The criminality of this class of women develops on the same foundation of epilepsy and moral insanity. The physical characters are those peculiar to the male born criminal—projecting ears, strabismus, anomalies of dentition, and abnormal conformation of the skull, brain, etc.; in addition, an absence of feminine traits. In voice, structure of the pelvis, distribution of hair, etc., she tends to resemble the opposite sex and to lose all the instincts peculiar to her own.

From this brief description it may be gathered that this work on the female offender owes much of its interest to the light it throws on the normal woman. It is true that it casts doubt on many of the postulates of feminism; but, on the other hand, it lays stress on and exalts the many invaluable qualities characteristic of the female sex.