A Woman Scorned Quotes

“In addition to everything else working in Bedlow’s favor, there was his status as “citizen,” an identity that was unavailable to Lanah Sawyer and all women in early national New York. At the opening of the trial, one of the defense attorneys referred to him as a “fellow citizen.” Raising the specter of a false accusation, he warned the jury that rape “is an offense … so easily charged by the woman … putting the life of a citizen in the hands of a woman, to be disposed of almost at her will and pleasure.” This statement transformed the case “into a dispute between a citizen and an outsider,” which Arnold notes was “potent rhetoric in a post-revolutionary climate in which the glories of citizenship had been so recently hardwon.”45”
― Peggy Reeves Sanday, A Woman Scorned