Lizzie Borden, The Girl with the Pansy Pin

Lizzie Borden and her sister Emma live a life of privilege and entitlement, with wealth and social status far beyond their neighbors. But most pleasures are just window dressing, dangling beyond their reach. Riches are kept quarantined by a frugal patriarch, unable or unwilling to change his scrimping ways. As they become older, Lizzie and her sister grow restless, aching for a more opulent life-to reside on The Hill, in a big house, amongst their peers and Fall River's finest families. Now their father plans to give all his wealth away-to his wife, no doubt. And, why not? Abby Durfee Borden had been a devoted mother to his two ungrateful daughters. Andrew Jackson Borden has no intention of moving to The Hill or abandoning the home he purchased for his wife. Discord and turmoil soon began to ferment and fester. Lizzie expresses concern that "Father has enemies and I fear that they will burn the house down around us." On a sultry August morning, in the naked light of day, someone enters 92 Second Street and brutally hacks and murders Andrew and Abby Borden. Soon the finger of guilt points to Lizzie. But she loves her father. He means everything to her. The gold ring she had lovingly given him and that he always wore said as much. She would never harm him. Or would she? The Girl with the Pansy Pin tells the gripping story of a desirable and vivacious young Victorian woman desperately longing for adventure and a lavish life. Instead, she wastes away in a stale, modest existence, in a father's foregone reality, one with little chance of ever discovering love, happiness, or fulfillment. And now they have charged poor Lizzie with double murder.