Rape and Sexual Power in Early America

I tried to apply the 123 meme to Wesley Frank Craven's The Southern Colonies in the Seventeenth Century, 1607-1689. Alas, Mr. Craven's delightful writing style being what it is, there were only five sentences on page 123. If there were a fine for promiscuous use of the semicolon, Mr. Craven would owe the reading public a substantial debt.

Instead, let's have a look at Sharon Block's Rape and Sexual Power in Early America:

A father or husband could notify a magistrate about the crime, but the victim would have to give a deposition with specifics of the attack. Here the victim's world of women fell away as she had to tell her story to what was sometimes a roomful of men. Victims who had already been questioned or examined by other women probably had some idea what a magistrate would expect in a rape accusation and might have been bolstered by the support of mothers, fathers, husbands, or masters.

Methinks Roger Thompson should take a look at this book instead of declaring patriarchy dead.

123 Meme: Sex in Middlesex

Step 1: Pick up the nearest book of 123 pages or more.
Step 2: Find page 123.
Step 3: Read the first five complete sentences.
Step 4: Post the next three sentences.

Here's mine:
Sex in Middlesex: Popular Mores in a Massachusetts County, 1649-1699
by Roger Thompson (1986)

In 1682 when he was sixty-nine, he was caught in the prison in the act of copulation with the already heavily pregnant Mary Lovell. For this, he was dismissed from his post, evicted from his house, and sentenced with a certain poetic justice to be whipped twenty stripes in April 1683. Six months later the flogged flogger flagged and died.

Interesting. I should do this for all of my seminar books.