In an essay for Quadrant, Dalrymple reflects on the notorious case of Violette Nozière, a young woman who murdered her father in 1930s France, to illustrate the moral confusion that often arises when criminal responsibility, psychological explanation, and social sympathy collide.
The criminal law is not principally therapy for criminals, as exposure therapy is for those suffering from arachnophobia.
A reader provides some good food for thought on two key topics: death penalty and the quandary of Violette’s lying in the face of human judgement. And of course she is of the “Greatest Generation” as it’s been called…
———— “PGANG” on the original article ————-
Then there is the secular dichotomy. On the one hand human life has no underlying value, and in many cases we treat it with contempt. Yet a convicted felon’s life is somehow sacred. It seems a bit desperate to me – a proof of society’s virtue. If we allow some sort of relative measure of the value of a secular life, then why is the felon’s life of greater value than those whom we want to euthanase, or of unborn children? Or people who are locked up in their own homes for not being ill?
Maybe the secular world has simply lost faith in its own judgement.
As for Violette, child sex abuse just seems a little too convenient to use as an excuse. On the other hand, her doting parents may have been complicit in other ways. M. Scott Peck in his study of evil provides fascinating case studies of seemingly normal parents psychologically destroying their own children, and a willingly evil entwining between victim and perpetrator which might explain the three poisoning attempts.
While the story of her life appears to have played out to a reasonable end, do we really know what lay underneath? Did she repent? Or perhaps it was the enforced distancing from her parents which eventually cured her. And what was her relationship with her own offspring?