On her book Witches, Wife Beaters, and Whores: Common Law and Common Folk in Early America
Cover Interview of January 22, 2012
A close-up
Having sorted this out in my own mind, I admit that I play favorites with the various chapters.
If the name-calling Dutch in chapter one are the most amusing characters, and the violent abusers in chapter three the most disturbing, the most captivating stories are those where we revel in the intimate details of people’s lives.
Thus, even though I remain ambivalent about whether Cuff actually attempted to rape Comfort Taylor, the details of the case allow us to envision not only what-might-have-been but to appreciate the nuances of life in eighteenth-century Newport, Rhode Island.
The opening pages remind us of a slower time when water and horseback were the basic modes of transportation. Meeting the young widowed Comfort for the first time we wonder if women usually traveled alone across long distances and whether she had any misgivings boarding the ferry late in the day with only an enslaved ferry captain for company. As darkness enveloped Narragansett Bay, men on shore heard her shout for help and rushed to her rescue. Back at the ferry house, Comfort showed her bruises and claimed Cuff assaulted her. Cuff denied everything, and his owner, Thomas Borden, offered Comfort compensation to make the incident go away. Comfort chose to sue Cuff, and the jury’s verdict along with subsequent events shows how microhistorical narratives have the ability to nuance and complicate stories. In this case, the nuances leave us wondering whether Comfort was a victim or a scheming predator, and the fact that Cuff—a slave—was afforded all the legal rights of a free white male complicates the subject of slavery. The ending? Surprises to be sure, but ones not to be revealed here.
The dominant premise in evolution and economics is that a person is being loyal to natural law if he or she attends to self’s interest and welfare before being concerned with the needs and demands of family or community. The public does not realize that this statement is not an established scientific principle but an ethical preference. Nonetheless, this belief has created a moral confusion among North Americans and Europeans because the evolution of our species was accompanied by the disposition to worry about kin and the collectives to which one belongs.Jerome Kagan, Interview of September 17, 2009
[T]he Holocaust transformed our whole way of thinking about war and heroism. War is no longer a proving ground for heroism in the same way it used to be. Instead, war now is something that we must avoid at all costs—because genocides often take place under the cover of war. We are no longer all potential soldiers (though we are that too), but we are all potential victims of the traumas war creates. This, at least, is one important development in the way Western populations envision war, even if it does not always predominate in the thinking of our political leaders.Carolyn J. Dean, Interview of February 01, 2011
A close-up
Having sorted this out in my own mind, I admit that I play favorites with the various chapters.
If the name-calling Dutch in chapter one are the most amusing characters, and the violent abusers in chapter three the most disturbing, the most captivating stories are those where we revel in the intimate details of people’s lives.
Thus, even though I remain ambivalent about whether Cuff actually attempted to rape Comfort Taylor, the details of the case allow us to envision not only what-might-have-been but to appreciate the nuances of life in eighteenth-century Newport, Rhode Island.
The opening pages remind us of a slower time when water and horseback were the basic modes of transportation. Meeting the young widowed Comfort for the first time we wonder if women usually traveled alone across long distances and whether she had any misgivings boarding the ferry late in the day with only an enslaved ferry captain for company. As darkness enveloped Narragansett Bay, men on shore heard her shout for help and rushed to her rescue. Back at the ferry house, Comfort showed her bruises and claimed Cuff assaulted her. Cuff denied everything, and his owner, Thomas Borden, offered Comfort compensation to make the incident go away. Comfort chose to sue Cuff, and the jury’s verdict along with subsequent events shows how microhistorical narratives have the ability to nuance and complicate stories. In this case, the nuances leave us wondering whether Comfort was a victim or a scheming predator, and the fact that Cuff—a slave—was afforded all the legal rights of a free white male complicates the subject of slavery. The ending? Surprises to be sure, but ones not to be revealed here.