What if Violet could shoot?

Frances Stonor Saunders’ book The Woman Who Shot Mussolini explores Violet’s attempted assassination of Il Duce in 1926 and her treatment in mental institutions afterward. Gibson, the daughter of the Lord Chancellor of Ireland, emerges as a wounded and fragile woman seeking to define her life at a time when Ireland was trying to define itself. In her youth she mixed with the aristocracy and royalty. She died in 1956 in St Andrew’s Hospital for Mental Diseases, Northampton – where James Joyce’s daughter Lucia would later be committed – having been committed there after her departure from Italy. At the end of her life she was largely confined to her bed through illness but still keenly interested in news and current affairs.

Stonor Saunders’ sympathies are firmly with Violet, and it is difficult not to feel the same. What the author attempts to do is find out why things happened to Violet as they did, and it is a stirring and interesting look into what motivates people.

Violet was a fractured woman. Having often suffered bad health in her youth and having undergone extensive medical treatments – including having one breast removed after suffering Paget’s disease – she became more and more interested in religion. This saw her take the path from Protestantism to Christian Science to Theosophy and eventually to a sort of socialist Catholicism. Her conversion to Catholicism was ruinous to her relationship with her Protestant, unionist father, who had always been emotionally withdrawn and distant from her.

The book is also a window into the divisions that wracked Irish society in the early 20th century, as Violet and her brother Willie became devoted to the nationalist cause despite their background. It also shows the consequences: Willie was the eldest son but was disinherited by his father. Violet eventually lost contact with most of her family apart from her sister Constance who took responsibility for her sister’s affairs while in St Andrew’s.

Although unjustly treated by the authorities at times, Violet did suffer from delusions and violent tendencies. In her adult years, she once attacked a servant with a knife and attacked fellow patients throughout her time in the asylums. But as to why she targeted Mussolini, there are only educated guesses based on her journals and the correspondence and testimony of others. At some point in her life she became fixated on the ideas of sacrifice and martyrdom. As an example of Violet’s deterioration, the book includes four photographs of her handwriting, which goes from fluid and cursive in her youth to blocky and erratic in later life.

It is interesting also how Violet became the subject of high-level political games. Britain, of which she was a citizen, was eager to maintain good relations with Mussolini so as to fend off communism. Mussolini, in turn, wanted good relations with Britain because it added international legitimacy to his reign. The book presents almost a case of parallel lives, not suggesting a collision course as such but giving enough detail to show exactly what was going on in the Italy of Mussolini’s era. To the end of her life Violet was convinced she was beloved by the people of Italy for her actions.

There are times when the book’s style lets it down. For instance, several chapters open with staccato sentences and quotations, although the main text gives no named source for these. Sources are listed toward the end of the book, but as it is written they just seem to have been placed randomly as Stonor Saunders attempts to recreate the tensions of the independence movement and the decadence of the Roaring Twenties.

There are also a few weak points. For example, the book draws parallels between the exaggerated actions and body movements of Mussolini and those of certain mental patients (complete with photographs showing the similarity). While it is interesting to ask just what and who defines mental illness, particularly as Mussolini was considered sane and even respectable, it should be noted that exaggerated gestures meant people at the back of rallies could see movement from the speaker. Up close, Mussolini may have seemed nearly deranged, but from a distance he simply looked animated. Diversions such as this distract somewhat from analysis of Violet’s motivations and her time in the institution.

These small criticisms aside, the book is written in a lively and engaging style and is a fascinating look into an event that came close to changing history, but of which most people are unaware.

Also trying to get into the mindset of assassins is Lindsay Porter, who has published Assassination: A History of Political Murder. Rather than presenting a series of murders with a short account of each and their aftermath, this book sets out to show the evolution of the act over generations, from the stabbing of Julius Caesar to the shooting of John F Kennedy and the fundamentalism of the 21st century. Porter tries to understand the motivations behind each case study, examines the contexts in which political murder has been sanctioned – at a state of individual level – and how it has been treated down through the years.

But she not only notes the actions of the killer or would-be killer, but also the change in reputation of the victim. As she rightly points out, it is now incredibly difficult to evaluate Kennedy’s actual presidency so surrounded has he become by conspiracy theories related to his murder. Even those considered outlaws at the time have become shrouded by even deeper layers of prestige and mystery following their murders. Porter uses the Mexican revolutionaries Pancho Villa and Emiliano Zapata as case studies for this, noting that even despite public viewings of Zapata’s corpse (a photo of which is included) many still believed his double had been killed, not him. Both are now national heroes and are deeply rooted in Mexican popular culture.

Accompanied by a wealth of illustrations and photographs, this is an accessible and interesting book that goes beyond the obvious and attempts to understand the thought processes behind political killings.