THE SEWING GIRL'S TALE

A history professor examines a woman’s court fight to restore her violated sexual honor in 1790s America.

In 1793, a seamstress named Lanah Sawyer was raped by Harry Bedlow, “an elite sexual predator” who posed as a lawyer to gain her trust. In this incisive historical investigation, Sweet, a history professor at the University of North Carolina and former director of its program in sexuality studies, reconstructs a memorable story that reveals the virulent anti-feminism embedded in American democracy. Sawyer had the spotless reputation society required of all “decent” women; Sweet notes that any fall from grace would plunge her into “a world of scandal and shame from which she might never emerge.” Despite her lower status as a working-class woman, Sawyer sought legal reparations. “Even if others couldn’t see past her social station, her work as a sewing girl, Lanah Sawyer could,” writes Sweet. “She felt she had a right to a revolutionary dream of human equality. Other dreamers, too, were crushed in these years. Some of them, like her, had the courage to fight back.” In the contentious trial that followed, Bedlow was cast as the victim of Sawyer’s wiles. Newspapers debates begun by elite women emphasized the sexual double standard, but a male backlash against “disorderly women”—e.g., the owner of the bawdy house where Bedlow raped Sawyer—overwhelmed those voices. Ultimately, Sawyer’s stepfather successfully sued Bedlow for seduction—i.e., for breaching his right to give consent to intercourse with his daughter. “In seduction suits,” writes Sweet, “the question of consent was hardly mentioned, much less disputed. Jurors—and everyone else involved—generally took the woman’s father at his word.” This carefully researched book will appeal to historians, feminist scholars, and anyone with an interest in narratives that chronicle female erasure in a social system created by and for the benefit of (White) men.

A thoughtful and engaging history lesson.