Reply To: Life in Hallowell in 1789
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Like Tara and Nancy, I found life in 1789 rural, small town Maine both different and what I expected. Two aspects stand out for me.
Women who accuse a man of rape are villainized, discredited, accused of lying, to have failed to resist or to have enjoyed being violated. That is fundamentally unchanged in contemporary society. The “Me Too” movement may have moved the needle some and for awhile but, in my view, not far enough and not in a lasting way. I understand that lasting change in deeply engrained attitudes takes time, involves both forward progress and regression. Still, I think the belief that men have a claim on women’s bodies remains for many. In TFR, it falls to the husbands and lovers of women who have been raped to exact punishmen, and a violent one at that. Otherwise, the man is acquitted in a court that makes it virtually impossible for the woman to be heard and minimizes the man’s crime as ‘attempted.”
The second thing I found fascinating was the ambivalent view of intercourse outside of marriage. It was ostensibly condemned and the woman fined (as though only she had any role in a pregnancy) yet also sort of expected and accepted. Healthy weight babies born too soon after the parents married are claimed to be premature. A newly married couple lives apart for two months after the wedding, ostensibly so the husband can make certain he is the father of a child his wife is found to be carrying should she become pregnant before they begin “housekeeping.” And the midwife is required to declare in court the birth of a child conceived outside of marriage and name the father if one is identified. And yet, the community seems to expect that is how things go. I found one of the truly touching scenes in the story when Martha testifies to the birth of Sally Pierce’s child and when asked to name the father, Jonathan steps up to announce it himself and to pay the fine, actually, more than the fine.