Germaine Berton: la violenza di una donna contro la violenza della società

Abstract

On 20 December 1923, the trial of Germaine Berton opened at the Paris Assize Court; she was accused of the murder of Marius Plateau, leader of the Camelots du Roy, the youth organisation of the Ligue d’Action Française, a far-right French party. This essay aims to analyse the biography of a ‘violent’ woman through the account of the trial – both judicial and in the media – to which Germaine Berton was submitted following her crime, as an example of a form of anti-feminism. The focus will therefore be on the reaction to the social and political context, which generated hostility and deep divisions, and on the judgement levelled against her by that very society, the result of judgements and representations that went beyond the context of the criminal act itself, often directed ‘against women’.