'As a general rule," the French physician Auguste Fabre wrote in 1883, "all women are hysterical. And every women carries with her the seeds of hysteria."
Listening to proceedings in the High Court in Cape Town this week, one got the sense that Fabre and murder accused Jason Rohde might find a lot of common ground over a beer.
Over the course of four days on the stand, Rohde and his defence team invoked the spectre of a deranged woman to explain why — in their version of events — Rohde's wife, Susan, might have chosen to hang herself with the cord of a hair straightener from a hotel door after becoming aware of her husband's affair with a colleague.
Furious. Aggressive. Volatile. Irrational. These were all adjectives used by Rohde to describe the woman who the state claims he strangled to death on the morning of July 24 2016.
Susan has been depicted as the living embodiment of the old chestnut about the fury of a scorned woman. Of Susan the loving mother, or Susan the faithful wife, or Susan the fun-loving friend — silence...