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Laura Leffler's avatar

"The takeaway isn’t that Gauguin wasn’t a predator, it’s that, perversely, he had a legal right to be one."

this needs to be heard.

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Eliza Glen Jameson's avatar

This is awesome. I'm in the middle of a bunch of research on abduction/seduction/rape law in late 18ce England, and your comment that Gauguin had a legal right to be a predator immediately made me think of the disparity between opportunity for legal recourse based on class (and by extension, race). Even in the 17th and 18th centuries, England was not okay with men poaching young women for wives--but, only if the women were set to inherit or were part of a propertied family. Sadly it was a woman's status as a financial asset to their families that ensured her right to sue her abductor (and actually, she couldn't even sue, it had to be her father).

Highly recommend "Eighteenth Century Abduction Law and Clarissa" by Joan I. Schwarz. She has some excellent caselaw study in there.

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