Rape and the Corrupt Legal System of the American Colonies

1972 Words4 Pages

The meaning and penalties of rape have progressed throughout the history of America to ensemble the mindset of the time. Records show that a man in the seventeenth century was convicted of attempted rape if "he used enticement and then force toward a woman, driven by the sinful lusts that raged within him...and he allowed her...to scare or fight him off" (Dayton 238). Unfortunately, this definition was not always taken at face value. The leading men of the seventeenth century, likely white men, reformed this definition in a variation of ways to work in their favor when suspected of rape. It can be determined from study of historical information that the reason there are fewer reported rapes against white males in the seventeenth century and more against non-white males was because women gave in to a society driven by the influence and governance of white males in the legal system. This concept is demonstrated through a look into the outcome of a number of rape cases against both white men and non-white men, through an understanding of the helpless station of women, and through a view at the basis of the white man's resentment toward the non-white male: their view of the non-white male as the "other."

The legal system of the colonial times renounced from punishing white males but did not falter from finding accountability with the actions of females, causing women to pause at reporting rape against white men. Two famed cases in history, those of Martha Richardson and Goodwife Fancy, represent this perception. Martha Richardson had gotten pregnant before her wedding with a man other than her fiancé. Upon this disclosure, Martha recalled fainting at her master's residence some time ago in the company of two white males and concl...

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...as because the societal pressures appealed upon women by these prominent white men had forced them to surrender their pride and give in to the corrupt legal system under whose definitive supremacy their fates depended.

Works Cited

Axtell, James. Beyond 1492: Encounters in Colonial North America. Oxford University Press, 1992.

Dayton, Cornelia Hughes. Women Before the Bar: Gender, Law, And Society In Connecticut, 1639-1789. University of North Carolina Press, 1995.

Hartog, Hendrik. "The Public law of a County Court: Judicial Government in Eighteenth Century Massachusetts." American Journal of Legal History, XX (1976), 282-329

Rowlandson, Mary. The Sovereignty and Goodness of God. Ed. Neal Salisbury. Bedford Books, 1997.

Vilbert, Elizabeth. Traders' Tales: Narratives of Cultural Encounters in the Columbia Plateau, 1807-1846. University of Oklahoma Press, 1997.

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