Ryan Murphy’s Monster series has never been overly concerned with facts. Though the anthology series’ first season, The Jeffrey Dahmer Story, meticulously recreated certain moments from the serial killer’s trial, each successive installment has driven us further away from reality. Monster: The Ed Gein Story, written by Ian Brennan and directed by Max Winkler, blends fact with fiction in a fascinating yet messy exploration of the titular man and his cultural legacy. Now, this creative duo has reunited for Monster: The Lizzie Borden Story, a miniseries that veers into outright fantasy.
In 1892, Lizzie Borden was accused of the grisly ax murders of her father Andrew and her stepmother Abby. The resulting trial captivated the world with its implication that a woman of high society could have committed such a violent crime. Lizzie was eventually acquitted and went to her grave proclaiming her innocence. But Brennan and Winkler present her guilt as absolute fact, bending scant historical records to paint her as a feminist hero.
To be fair, the crime happened more than 130 years ago, before the advent of modern investigation. Though we do have some contemporaneous evidence, many of the details have been lost to time. We simply do not know what happened in the Borden house, and every theory is mere speculation.
In previous seasons of Murphy’s hit show, we could do a detailed fact check. But here, we have mostly conjecture and wild theorizing designed to build a larger narrative. It would perhaps be easier to identify what Monster: the Lizzie Borden Story does get right, rather than where it strays from reality. Though the resulting show is a timely exploration of feminine rage, it’s worth remembering that this salacious series is based on real people who experienced an unthinkable crime.
WARNING: The following contains major spoilers for Monster: The Lizzie Borden story.
The Borden Family
The season opens with an ornate curtain, raised to indicate a performance. Perhaps that is our hint that what we are about to see will be mostly fictional. After a breathtaking recreation of both murders, we jump back in time several months to meet the unhappy family. We watch Lizzie (Ella Beatty) suffer through a vicious etiquette lesson followed by a humiliating rejection from a would-be suitor. Abby (Rebecca Hall) makes it painfully clear that she loathes her “imbecile” stepdaughter and wants her married off and out of the house.
For the next four episodes, we watch an almost comically cruel Abby torment her wide-eyed stepdaughter and any servant who crosses her path. She throws scalding soup in one cook’s face and stalks around the house in a white glove, determined to find a speck of dust that will allow her to punish her new housemaid Bridget (Vicky Krieps), referred to as Maggie in a mix of racism and laziness. Abby is so condescending and vile that she simply cannot be bothered to learn Bridget’s name.
Her husband Andrew (Charlie Hunnam) is not much better. The miserly man constantly reminds his wife and daughter that he detests living in a house full of women, openly chastising Abby for failing to give him a son. A woodworker by trade, Andrew spends his days insulting his young apprentice and scamming clients by chopping off the feet of corpses to fit them into ill-sized coffins. The only thing he seems to care about, besides hoarding his massive wealth, is an impressive collection of axes from around the world. He dotes on these tools of his bizarre trade and has given each a female name.
The Borden house is wholly unpleasant, and we can see that Lizzie suffers from extreme insecurity, the result of a lifetime of emotional abuse. Even her sister Emma (Billie Lourd) treats her with barely concealed contempt, casually informing her younger sibling that she will receive only 5% of their father’s wealth. Emma will inherit the other 95%. Lizzie’s only refuge is an alley of cherry trees behind the house leading to a dovecote haven filled with beautiful birds. But unable to stand her daughter’s fleeting happiness, Abby takes an ax and murders the doves, claiming to be disturbed by their incessant cooing.
A Tense Household and an Ax
Unfortunately, very little of this outsized unpleasantness is based in fact. We do know that the real Borden household was often tense, with Bridget frequently forced to serve meals at multiple sittings because stepmother and daughter refused to eat with each other. This tension seems to have stemmed from a financial dispute. Lizzie and Emma took issue with an expensive property Andrew gave to his wife, the girls feeling that he should save his wealth for his own flesh and blood. Andrew did attempt to correct this perceived slight, gifting houses to both of his daughters, though this seems not to have mended the rift.
Most likely, these resentments grew from the tragic loss of Andrew’s first wife, who died when Lizzie was a toddler. His marriage to Abby was one of convenience for both — she could escape her own unhappy home while he would get a surrogate mother for his two young children. While this worked out logistically, it seems Lizzie never cared much for her stepmother, believing the woman to be a gold digger. She was known to mock Abby’s appearance and refer to her as a “mean old thing,” but we have no record of the vitriol Winkler’s Abby spews at her adopted daughter.
By all accounts, Andrew had a good relationship with his youngest child. Though he didn’t wear a wedding ring, the Borden patriarch was always seen wearing a gold ring Lizzie had given him. Andrew was stingy with money and did make part of his fortune from selling coffins, but there’s no reason to believe that he was secretly mangling corpses with an elaborate collection of anthropomorphized axes. While it is true that he and Abby referred to their Irish maids as “Maggie,” regardless of their actual names, the Borden house was likely not the abusive nightmare Winkler depicts.
In fact, most of the first few episodes are entirely fictional. As part of her alibi for the murders, Lizzie remembers eating a pear from a tree in the yard, but she did not have a prized alley of cherry trees. She also explained blood found on an ax by claiming that her father had previously killed some birds, but there is nothing to indicate that these were treasured pets. Winkler and Brennan have seemingly constructed this scenario based on theories developed years after the fact. While a bit of narrative deviation is to be expected in a fictionalized account, this portrayal of the crime’s two victims as monstrous abusers is hard to stomach. Winkler creates a series of unforgivable sins against a naive and innocent Lizzie, outright suggesting that Abby and Andrew deserved their fates.
A Poisoned Precursor
This narrative choice is made clear in Lizzie’s first attempt to murder her parents. After the brutal dove slaying, the more worldly Bridget suggests they use spoiled oysters to poison the pair. This is followed by an upbeat montage in which the women gleefully cook the deadly soup. Winkler sets the scene to “Cuntology 101”, in which the Lambrini Girls insist “I’m gonna do what’s best for me.” At dinner, their intended victims gobble up the soup while Lizzie pretends to take a dainty sip. What follows is a disgusting scene of slapstick purging on par with the infamous pie eating contest from Stand By Me. Vomit covers the room as Abby and Andrew writhe around spewing geysers of bile, oysters, and blood.
It’s a thrilling moment of Good For Her horror in which Lizzie seeks revenge for years of cruelty, only marred by the fact that it probably isn’t true. In her alibi, Lizzie notes that the whole household was sick from eating spoiled swordfish the day before and had been up vomiting most of the night. A local shopkeeper also claimed that Lizzie attempted to buy prussic acid the day before the murders, a chemical known for its use in poisoning rats. While we do know that a doctor visited the Borden house to treat a case of food poisoning, we have no way of knowing whether Lizzie attempted to slay her parents via poison, nor do we know if Bridget herself was involved in any conspiracy.
Another Ax Murder
As the fictionalized Lizzie and Bridget begin devising their plan, they decide to go on a practice run. As punishment for the oyster debacle, Bridget has been sent to clean the home of Bertha Manchester (Linda Reiter), a friend of the Bordens’ whose own servant has mysteriously fallen ill. But this is not a kind gesture to help out a friend. Abby allows Bridget no slack in her regular duties, expecting the servant to clean instead of sleep. Even worse, Mrs. Manchester is more vile than her full-time employer. In queer-coded language, she berates Bridget for catching her eye, then whips her with a cat o’ nine tails. When Lizzie sees the horrific scars, she concocts a plan to murder the old woman and chops her to death with her father’s ax. Bridget is briefly suspected of the crime, but police quickly arrest a Portuguese handyman, a horrific example of 19th-century racism.
The real Bertha Manchester was only 22 years old and had no discernible connection to the Borden family. She lived on her father’s dairy farm and was not at all the sadistic and grotesque taskmaster portrayed in Winkler’s retelling of events. Ms. Manchester was found brutally slaughtered in her Fall River home months after the Borden murders, notably while Lizzie was incarcerated and awaiting trial.
Winkler and Brennan recast this event to build the narrative of lovetorn and nervous killers preparing for a heinous act. Following a pattern established in previous seasons, the creators weave together Lizzie’s story with the tragic history of Aileen Wuornos, a Florida sex worker who confessed to killing a series of johns in 1989-90. A strong case could be made that Wuornos was the victim of horrific abuse, her motive a blend of revenge and self-defense. However, this does not align with the tragic murder of Bertha Manchester, who does not deserve this villainous portrayal.
The Bad Deaths of Andrew and Abby
After overtly cruel characterization, Brennan does give the senior Bordens a bit of hubris. We learn that the fictional Abby married Andrew in the wake of her mother’s suicide. Tasked with caring for baby Lizzie — who will not stop screaming — the new stepmother nearly suffers a panic attack. Combined with the revelation that she cannot have children of her own, Abby begins to drink every toxic liquid in sight. Detailing a loveless marriage and unhappy sex life, she pursues an affair with Lizzie’s uncle.
On the other side of this cold marriage bed, we learn that Andrew still grieves his late first wife, viewing his daughters as painful reminders of the partner he lost. In an episode directed by Sarah Adina Smith, Abby asks her husband for a divorce, to which he begrudgingly agrees. The newly liberated woman prepares to leave Fall River for good, having secured her half of Andrew’s wealth. But Lizzie is unwilling to let her intended victim go and chooses this moment to carry out her plan. Unleashing decades of pent-up rage, she chases Abby around the house and pulverizes her skull with Andrew’s ax. Bridget cares for Lizzie in the aftermath, gently sponging away the blood.
Episode five deals with a similar end of Andrew’s life. After agreeing to the dissolution of his marriage, the unpleasant man proceeds to get extremely drunk. He spends the night in a brothel, trading his precious gold ring for a night of sex. He awakens the next morning, disheveled but remorseful. After retrieving his ring, Andrew returns home, hat in hand, ready to beg for Abby’s forgiveness. But what he finds is a hacked-up corpse. As he cradles his wife’s bloody body, Lizzie attacks. What follows is an extended murder scene in which Andrew puts up an impressive fight, but eventually stumbles onto Lizzie’s blade.
We will never know exactly what happened in the Borden house, but the facts dispute this sequence of events. Though both episodes end with bodies falling in the correct places, everything else is fictional. Based on post-mortem examination, we know that Abby was killed on Thursday morning and that Andrew died roughly ninety minutes later, contradicting Brennan’s vague timeline. There is no evidence to suggest that the Bordens were planning to divorce or that Abby was set to leave the house. The theatrical kills that open the season are probably more accurate than the in-depth recreations we see in episodes four and five. But these fantastical and heartwrenching death sequences serve as payoff to Brennan’s larger narrative. We’re meant to indulge in the fear on each victim’s face when Lizzie finally reclaims her power.
The Trial of the Century
Over the course of eight episodes, Brennan and Winkler include few details about the heavily documented trial itself, likely to avoid narrative inconsistencies. We do know that Lizzie was imprisoned for ten months in the New Bedford jail where she had a highly publicized quarrel with her sister. We also know that both the prosecution and her defense leaned on reductive gender stereotypes while dissecting the brutal nature of the crimes. At the time, many considered it flatly impossible for a woman to commit such heinous acts, particularly a woman of Lizzie’s stature.
On the other hand, several bloody rags were found in the Borden household, which Lizzie dismissed as cloth used to tend to her so-called womanly sickness. Winkler nods to this when a policeman finds a bloody scrap of fabric and immediately drops it when Lizzie mentions her period. Though women were considered incapable of murderous brutality, a menstruating woman was thought to be a different kind of monster. At the time, it was generally accepted that women were more prone to uncontrollable criminality during their time of the month.
Though clearly shaken by the deaths of her parents, Lizzie struggles to show convincing grief. Few of her supporters actually believe she is truly innocent and simply accept that the murders were justified. One of these defenders is famed actress Nance O’Neil (Jessica Barden), who coaches Lizzie on her courtroom demeanor. Realizing that a trial is, in essence, a performance, she teaches Lizzie the art of bashfulness while showing her convincing ways to swoon. Lizzie nails her performance with a showy faint in the middle of the crowded courtroom, swaying the all-male jury and essentially securing a “not guilty” verdict.
While it is true that Lizzie did befriend the real Nance O’Neil, they did not meet until well after her trial had concluded. Though Lizzie did reportedly swoon when plaster casts of her parents’ skulls were revealed as evidence, there’s no reason to assume she was playing to the jury’s sympathies. However, it’s likely true that she was acquitted partly because 19th-century men simply did not want to admit that a lady of high society could commit such an atrocious crime. It’s this type of dismissive misogyny that Winkler and Brennan have built the show to combat. Their Lizzie is a flawed and complex feminist hero, a Good For Her avenger who is perfectly capable of hacking her own parents to death if it means improving her situation.
Bridget and Lizzie
It’s tempting to embrace this version of Lizzie Borden, particularly considering her onscreen relationship with Bridget. Building on modern theories of the crime, Winkler and Brennan posit that the two women fell deeply in love and planned the murders so that they could be together. It’s intoxicating to watch the show’s only likeable main characters grow closer, sharing a fascination with female empowerment. Though forced to separate throughout the trial, they do find their way back together again.
Having inherited her father’s vast fortune, Lizzie is able to buy a more luxurious house and live out her days in relative peace, though she must deal with a community that does not buy her innocence. We see that years after the sensational trial, she has become a sort of boogeyman, a murderer who got away with her crimes. Winkler’s Lizzie takes refuge in the Suffragette movement, surrounding herself with progressive women. She makes amends for what she has done and receives forgiveness from her parents’ ghosts.
While this coda puts a bow on Lizzie’s story, tying it together with Wuornos’ own execution, the truth is a bit more complicated. At the time of the murders, Lizzie was 36 years old while Bridget was only 25. The younger Borden daughter was not a doe-eyed innocent coaxed to kill by an older lover. In fact, we have no evidence that the two were ever intimate. Bridget never returned to the Borden house after testifying at Lizzie’s trial. Though there’s no way to definitively prove their involvement one way or another, it’s likely the two never saw each other again.
We must also remember that unlike Jeffrey Dahmer, Ed Gein, Lyle and Erik Menendez — the male murderers that center previous Monster seasons — Lizzie was acquitted of all crimes and has steadfastly maintained her innocence. By many accounts, the real Ms. Borden, who did begin calling herself Lisbeth, chose to stay in Fall River in defiance of the neighbors who accused her of parricide. With a case entirely built on circumstantial evidence, it’s just as possible that Abby and Andrew were murdered by a wandering maniac, or perhaps the same person who killed Bertha Manchester.
Over the years, Lizzie has become a feminist icon. Though the crime is technically unsolved, we’ve collectively accepted her guilt and excused it as the righteous rage of a woman living under patriarchal oppression. It can admittedly be inspiring to watch a submissive girl finally reclaim her power, albeit through bloodthirsty means. There’s joy to be found in the violent dismemberment of a system built to deny female agency. But should this catharsis come at the expense of three people who were brutally murdered?
An ahistorical depiction of Lizzie may lend itself to Good for Her horror, but to get there, we have to let go of documented reality. For some, that may be a bridge too far.