How Does The Direct Characterization Of Ruth Snyder

In 1927, a simple, somewhat botched murder became the center of an unprecedented media frenzy. Ruth Snyder, trapped in a loveless marriage, persuaded her husband Albert to purchase increased life insurance; she then attempted to murder him with poison, sleeping pills, mercury tablets, and poisonous gas. She was unsuccessful in all attempts to kill her husband, until she enlisted the help of her lover, Judd Gray. On March 20, the dysfunctional pair snuck into Albert’s bedroom, and successfully murdered Albert by hitting him with a sash weight, strangling him with picture wire, and stuffing chloroform in his nostrils. The pair attempted to cover their tracks with a fake alibi for Gray, and a fake story of a robbery, which was neither convincing

In the Mirror, for example, Thyra Samter Winslow gives a cruel twist to Ruth’s allure by describing her: “cold, mean eyes, and her slit of a mouth is even crueller than I had been led to suppose.” This description suggests a snake, and the reference to cruelty strips her of all personality apart from her crime, effectively eliminating any chance of sympathy from the reader. Some assessments were even more extreme: “Ruth Snyder has been called ice. She has been called marble. She has been likened to iron and steel. But these things are all clean. She is ice. But she is the ice of a filthy, garbage-choked stream. If she could be melted down she would be a crawling mass of poisonous things.” In this portrayal, Ruth is viewed as “filthy” and “poisonous,” below even the lowest animals. This image incites disgust and repulsion from her clean surroundings. Readers were reassured that should not feel any sympathy for Ruth: “if Ruth Snyder is a woman, then by God! You must find another name for my mother, wife, or sister….” Mack, in this quote, feels no human connection with Ruth Snyder; he is outraged by her attack on his concept of femininity and rejects any possible claim by her to human sympathy. He isolates her, leaving her no place in the family circle, thereby placing her completely outside