A cura di @NedCuttle21(Ulm).

Un articolo pubblicato sul New York Times presenta il libro The Five: The Untold Lives of the Women Killed by Jack the Ripper, l’ultimo lavoro della scrittrice britannica Hallie Rubenhold. Nell’opera, l’autrice esplora la vita delle vittime del famigerato Jack lo squartatore, aspetto spesso trascurato da chiunque negli anni si sia occupato, e non solo da un punto di vista letterario o cinematografico, degli omicidi, irrisolti, compiuti tra l’estate e l’autunno del 1888 nell’East End di Londra, e questo sia a causa dell’ingombrante fascino esercitato da sempre sull’opinione pubblica dall’oscura figura del più noto serial killer di tutti i tempi che per la prosa classista e sessista con cui quelle donne furono dipinte sui giornali dell’epoca e alla quale si deve la loro collocazione nella memoria collettiva come individui segnati da un potente stigma sociale. Nel pezzo si parla anche di uno spettacolo teatrale che ha visto la luce poco dopo l’uscita del saggio storico della Rubenhold, dal titolo Jack the Ripper: The Women of Whitechapel, e del dibattito che ne è scaturito.

1. LONDON — I’d been living here for a little more than a year when I finally went on a Jack the Ripper walking tour.
2. My partner’s mother was in town, and a stroll past the old haunts of the still-unidentified murderer of at least five women in the East End of London in 1888 seemed like the kind of activity that would please a visiting parent with a taste for the macabre. I didn’t really start to feel uneasy until we paused outside a pub called the Ten Bells, a place two of Jack the Ripper’s victims supposedly frequented. Decades ago, our guide informed us, the pub had sought to capitalize on its history by transforming into a Ripper-themed bar, complete with murder-spree-themed memorabilia and special drinks. He said this with a high-minded contempt that I found confusing. Did he really think we were doing something more morally defensible?
3. By the time we’d reached the last stop, it was clear that we weren’t. The juxtaposition of gratuitous gore and tour-guide patter finally became too much when, outside of a narrow alley, our guide passed around a photograph of the Ripper’s final victim, a woman named Mary Jane Kelly, taken by the police after her death. Her murder is unique, even among the Ripper killings, for its brutality; one by one, we studied her mutilated corpse, and I tried to forget that a few minutes before, the guide had made fun of her because after a brief stint in France, she’d supposedly begun giving her name as Marie Jeanette. I remember him batting his eyelashes as he said it, delivering the name in a coquettish falsetto.

Immagine da Wikimedia.