Credit: Netflix

As the first female Monster of Ryan Murphy and Ian Brennan’s true-crime anthology series, The Lizzie Borden Story on Netflix forces everyone to think beyond the facts history establishes.

Monster: The Lizzie Borden Story dramatises the story of the young, repressed New England daughter, whose alleged crimes are portrayed in a disturbing yet sympathetic tone. As Ella Beatty puts it, “To be a woman at that time period in America was to feel confined: sexually, spiritually, emotionally.”

Although Borden was originally tried and acquitted of the heinous 1892 axe murders of her father, Andrew, and stepmother, Abby, the question remains: did she actually kill? If yes, then why?

The true-crime series imagines that Lizzie’s alleged murder of her parents was an outcome of the suffocating Victorian life she had to live under Andrew and Abby. “Every season of Monster has been an exercise in understanding the person’s psychology. This season is no exception, but we are looking at it through the lens of the female experience, which is different and really significant.”

Why did Lizzie kill her parents in Monster: The Lizzie Borden Story?

As the only subject of Ryan Murphy and Ian Brennan’s Monster anthology series to be acquitted in court, The Lizzie Borden Story demanded more than speculation. So, the dynamic creative duo tried to recreate the very world that could have pushed Lizzie to do the unthinkable. The series imagines Lizzie’s youth in a claustrophobic Victorian-era household where corsets and prudish dinners define life.

It’s not just a physical constraint but also a psychological one, sanctioned by the very society she chafes at. “Something as material as wearing the corset every single day is intense; it really limits your ability to breathe and puts an immense amount of physical pressure on your lower body,” Ella Beaty explains to Tudum. “These things that were current to the 1880s became really physical manifestations of where her emotional life was born and where, for me, a lot of that rage and strength emerged from.”

One of the earlier scenes in the series shows Abby scolding Lizzie for having her period amid a matchmaking date. However, Bridget “Maggie” Sullivan’s entry changes everything. Suddenly, she’s more inclined to listen to grotesque bedtime stories. But what pushes Lizzie and Maggie in The Lizzie Borden Story is Abby, who, tired of her unfulfilling life and disloyal husband, retaliates by killing the former’s flock of doves, citing that she was frustrated by the noise they made.

“We were able to find her backstory is sort of tragic as well,” Brennan says of Lizzie’s real-life stepmother. “She was forced to mother children who weren’t her own, and she is herself in a bit of a cage in the show, which was a good counterpoint to the journey that Lizzie goes on.”

Determined to exact revenge, she first tried to poison her parents by serving spoiled oysters with Maggie’s help. However, they survived after an evening of vomiting, leaving Lizzie to plot something more inevitable.

The chance finally arrived when Maggie’s work at her neighbour grew abusive, prompting Lizzie to pull a trial run with a hatchet. Although Maggie isn’t much help in this case, she promises to redeem herself when it comes to Abby and Andrew’s murders. And in episodes four and five, she does live up to her promise.