A feminist delight
There’s a saying that to men, women are potential prostitutes; to women, men are potential rapists. It’s a nasty quip, whether or not both genders believe it a moot question. Males smile when they hear it. Females are appalled.
Rape is the testing ground. He claims he was enticed or she made the charge when he refused to pay her the money or marry. She denies this, insisting he’d used brute force. Yes, they’d had sex, but what does that prove? No defensive marks on her? She didn’t want to be disfigured.
A heinous crime deserving dire punishment if — a very big if — the charge can be proven beyond a shadow of a doubt. It is not generally committed in public, one faith demanding she produce a handful of witnesses. Be that as it may, sex cases fill the courts. What did he say or do that might be regarded as seduction?
In E.M. Forster’s A Passage To India, set during the time of the Raj, an Englishwoman happened to be in a cave when the lights went out. She accused the Indian man there of attempted rape, earning the hapless man a police beating. When she testifies at his trial that it was nothing more than her fearful imagination, she is ostracised by her people.
In Anatomy Of A Scandal by Sarah Vaughan, a Brit political journalist-turned-author, she focuses on Kate, a London barrister, her literary creation. She is a feminist, the author calling her — Kate calling herself — a seeker of truth. Women are innocent. Men laugh at their naiveties and have their way with them. She is determined not to let them get away with it.
A case in point is a member of Parliament. James Whitehouse is a family man, with good political prospects. But he’s not above flirting and more, taking a woman’s “No” to mean “Maybe”. One accuses him. Kate is the prosecutor, facing down his Oxford cronies and friends in high places. This fictitious story is mainly about the trial, and her description of the British criminal-justice system.
Sarah Vaughan is no John Grisham, but if you’re a feminist, Anatomy Of A Scandal is probably your cup of tea.