The Women of “Sweeney Todd”

Who gets to decide their story?

CARINA DIERINGER

THIS ARTICLE CONTAINS MENTIONS OF SEXUAL ASSAULT AND SPOILERS FOR THE MUSICAL.

On Halloween night, I attended Century College’s production of “Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street.” It was my first time seeing the musical. Despite being named after a man, I think this story is really about how society fails women.

“Sweeney Todd” begins with former barber Benjamin Barker escaping from a life prison sentence and returning to London under the name Sweeney Todd to look for his wife and daughter. He discovers that Lucy (his wife) drank a bottle of arsenic after being raped by the town judge, and Johanna (his daughter) has been raised by the judge since her mother’s death.

Not long after, we find out that Judge Turpin, who has thought of Johanna as his daughter all her life, is now attracted to her and sees her as a “temptation.” He becomes jealous when Anthony, a sailor who recently docked in London, shows interest in Johanna. Turpin subsequently locks her away in the house. He then swears he will marry her in just a few days, even though she tries to run away when he proposes the idea to her. At the same time, Todd becomes obsessed with the idea of murdering Turpin as retribution for what happened to his wife and daughter.

Throughout the musical, Todd becomes more and more focused on his own need for revenge and less and less focused on the people he wants to get revenge for. He sings “I think I miss [Johanna] less and less / As every day goes by.” Even Anthony, who helps Johanna escape the judge’s house and later a madhouse, only does so because he thinks she is pretty and wants to pursue a relationship with her.

It takes Todd until the moment he realizes that a beggar woman he killed was actually Lucy, who hadn’t actually died before his return, for him to understand his mistakes. He didn’t recognize his own wife when she looked him in the eyes and said she knew him. He used his daughter as bait to get revenge on Turpin, who he knew was an active danger to her.

Johanna doesn’t get to make her own choices. Her life is always defined by the will of men around her, even those she doesn’t know. Lucy is dismissed as “crazy” and “trash” because she is lower-class, despite being considered extremely desirable before she was raped. Both of these examples are accurate portrayals of how women are treated in our society. The real question is, was it intentional to point this issue out in the musical, or were the writers reflecting their own internalized beliefs about the world?