The Papin sisters’ case had a profound impact on the society of their time, they were two servants who murdered the people they worked for, at first the scandal was huge, the media coverage was total, the press delivered sentences here and there. of outrage and adjectives of horror and contempt for both women.
From the beginning, many criminologists, psychoanalysts, psychologists and psychiatrists have addressed the Papin sisters, the incident drew attention to the dramatic details that characterized her, in the end they were tried and convicted, the press finally forgot them, but criminals. behavioral experts haven’t.
- Jacques Lacan himself and the couple Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir have made many reflections on this case of psychosis.
- As well as several criminologists and lawyers.
Writer Jean Genet wrote a play called The Maids to record what happened, considered one of the great dramas of the 20th century, let’s see how the story of the Papin sisters unfolded.
“Everything was clean. ” -First testimony of the Papin-
Despite the shocking details of the case, the story of the Papin sisters is first and foremosm a story of suffering. They were in three: Emilia, Christine and Léa. De the eldest, Emilia, little is known: only that it was abandoned in an orphanage.
Christine and Leah were the protagonists of the crime. His father, Gustave Papin, was alcoholic and aggressive; her mother, Clumence Derée, a woman without a maternal vocation.
She entrusted Christine to a sister-in-law to raise her, and seven years later he took her out and admitted her to the same orphanage where her older sister, Emilia, was staying and later lea, with whom she repeated the same pattern.
When Christine was 15, her mother took her off the premises and put her to work as a domestic servant in elite homes; he did the same with Léa at the age of 13.
The Lancelins, a wealthy family made up of a father, mother and only daughter, hire their two sisters, Christine and Léa, both girls behaved exemplaryly in the following years, submissive, considerate and hardworking. So much so that the neighbors called them “The Pearls of Lancelin. “
The Papin sisters didn’t go out for fun and had virtually no social life. Christine protected Lea and always followed her. At some point, the two begin calling Ms. Lancelin “mother. “
As Leah was still a minor, the two went to town to demand their total emancipation from their biological mother, Clerence, however, to their surprise, once they got there, they could not remember their mother’s name.
On February 2, 1933, the Papin sisters murdered Ms. Lancelin and her daughter, gouging out their eyes, still alive. Then they beat them with everything they found: hammers, vases, etc. , then they got rid of the corpses, cleaned all the instruments and washed, once this was done, they went up to the room, lay down and hugged each other. how the police found them.
They said that because of an iron defect the electricity had fallen inside the house, apparently Mrs. Lancelin was furious, she wanted to attack Christine and that triggered the crime, according to Lacan, when they killed Mrs. Lancelin, they were actually killing her mother, who still considered them objects.
During the trial that followed, the Papin sisters reported abuse and beatings by Mr. Lancelin. Christine was sentenced to death, which was then checked and converted into asylum.
Lea was sentenced to 10 years in prison. The mother went to visit them in jail, but they didn’t recognize her and called her “lady. “
The timing of the separation was quite dramatic, the two clung to their mother and force had to be used to separate them, Christine refused to eat and starved soon after, Lea was released from prison in 1943 and then moved in with her mother. He died at the age of 70.
Many believe that the social, moral and psychological exclusion to which the Papin sisters were subjected has resurfaced in the form of this heinous crime which, for Lacan, was a case of paranoid psychosis.
Subsequently, they found that in France at the time, when the events occurred, domestic workers were the highest-rated category of hospitalization in psychiatric institutions. Once hospitalized, the numbers remain alarming: they account for 80% of suicides.