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A WOMAN SCORNED

Name: A WOMAN SCORNED
Author: Peggy Reeves Sanday
ISBN: 0-385-47832-8

ACQUAINTANCE RAPE ON TRIAL

by Peggy Reeves Sanday ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 1, 1996

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An intriguing though overly schematic history of date rape in America, from colonial times to the present. According to feminist scholar Sanday (Anthropology/Univ. of Pennsylvania), if you want to understand what happened one March night in 1990, when six frat brothers at New York City's St. John's University gang-raped their intoxicated black classmate, you have to ``journey through the centuries'' and study the sexual culture of the Puritans and their ancestors. And if you want to understand why the St. John's defendants were either acquitted or sentenced to probation, you have to study the misogynist jury instruction about false accusations devised by the English jurist Matthew Hale in the mid-17th century. Sanday's thesis is an academic conceit of the highest order; her insistence on historicizing both the crime of acquaintance rape and its disposition in courts of law results in vast oversimplifications about trends in gender ideology and criminal jurisprudence. Nevertheless, the author's approach yields some provocative insights: For example, she draws a convincing parallel between the 1793 case of Lanah Sawyer, a teenage sewing girl raped by the libertine son of an aristocratic family, and the 1991 case of Patricia Bowman, who accused William Kennedy Smith of date rape after a brief encounter at a Palm Beach bar. Like Bowman, Sawyer was excoriated in court as the archetypal working-class gold digger with a questionable sexual history—and despite the popular perception that the famous defendant was guilty, he was acquitted. Sanday is less successful in demonstrating how the contradictory theories of Sigmund Freud, Havelock Ellis, Alfred Kinsey, Hugh Hefner, Kate Millett, Camille Paglia, and Katie Roiphe have melded to inspire the 20th-century sexual Zeitgeist, as well as the opposing verdicts in the St. John's and Mike Tyson rape trials. Better for the analysis of specific cases than for the tourist-class ``journey'' through intellectual and legal history. (Author tour)

Pub Date: March 1, 1996

ISBN: 0-385-47832-8

Page Count: 336

Publisher: Doubleday

Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 1995

Categories:

GENERAL NONFICTION

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NUTCRACKER

by E.T.A. Hoffmann ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 28, 1996

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This is not the Nutcracker sweet, as passed on by Tchaikovsky and Marius Petipa. No, this is the original Hoffmann tale of 1816, in which the froth of Christmas revelry occasionally parts to let the dark underside of childhood fantasies and fears peek through. The boundaries between dream and reality fade, just as Godfather Drosselmeier, the Nutcracker's creator, is seen as alternately sinister and jolly. And Italian artist Roberto Innocenti gives an errily realistic air to Marie's dreams, in richly detailed illustrations touched by a mysterious light. A beautiful version of this classic tale, which will captivate adults and children alike. (Nutcracker; $35.00; Oct. 28, 1996; 136 pp.; 0-15-100227-4)

Pub Date: Oct. 28, 1996

ISBN: 0-15-100227-4

Page Count: 136

Publisher: Harcourt

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1996

Categories:

GENERAL NONFICTION

- BOOK REVIEW
THE NUTCRACKER AND THE MOUSE KING
by E.T.A. Hoffmann ; adapted by Natalie Andrewson ; illustrated by Natalie Andrewson

- BOOK REVIEW
THE NUTCRACKER
by E.T.A. Hoffmann & illustrated by Julie Paschkis

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TO THE ONE I LOVE THE BEST

EPISODES FROM THE LIFE OF LADY MENDL (ELSIE DE WOLFE)

by Ludwig Bemelmans ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 23, 1955

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An extravaganza in Bemelmans' inimitable vein, but written almost dead pan, with sly, amusing, sometimes biting undertones, breaking through. For Bemelmans was "the man who came to cocktails". And his hostess was Lady Mendl (Elsie de Wolfe), arbiter of American decorating taste over a generation. Lady Mendl was an incredible person,- self-made in proper American tradition on the one hand, for she had been haunted by the poverty of her childhood, and the years of struggle up from its ugliness,- until she became synonymous with the exotic, exquisite, worshipper at beauty's whrine. Bemelmans draws a portrait in extremes, through apt descriptions, through hilarious anecdote, through surprisingly sympathetic and understanding bits of appreciation. The scene shifts from Hollywood to the home she loved the best in Versailles. One meets in passing a vast roster of famous figures of the international and artistic set. And always one feels Bemelmans, slightly offstage, observing, recording, commenting, illustrated.