'Dark Angel': Recap

Masterpiece presents a portrait of Mary Ann Cotton, the first female serial killer in the industrial era, in drama Dark Angel. A story of the a woman who killed her victims using pots of tea laced with arsenic, the two hour production explores what might make a woman on the edge of a nervous breakdown tip into madness.

Mary Ann: Why don't you let me make you a nice cup of tea.

What does make a woman go over the edge? Presumably the same things that make a man go a little mad sometimes. And yet, our patriarchial society insists that women, though the "fairer and weaker" sex and also the "more emotional half" of the human race somehow never go on crazed killing sprees. Serial killing seems to be mostly the provence of men, especially in our society's telling. Perhaps that's why, when it comes to the Victorian era, they hold up Jack the Ripper as an example instead of Mary Anne Cotton.