A Man's World

#9/15/11: While reading The Speech of Miss Polly Baker, I found myself struck profoundly not only by the content of the speech, but indeed by the tone with which the entire piece occurs. Polly Baker is pissed. And by that, I mean she is not submitting to the usual gender roles that in many ways governed the role of women in the Enlightenment. In pre-Enlightenment Europe, the idea of feminism had barely been broached, and as such the traditional laws and customs governing sex and gender relationships had remained unchanged for hundreds of years, and although in France during this time, there seems to be the beginnings of a "sexual revolution" in England, no such thing had occurred. In other words, this was a man's world. For Polly Baker to so ruthlessly attack the courts is one thing, but to do so with such a sense of irreverence is, I believe, a trait indicative of the times she lived in. When we observe political literature from a similar time, we are seeing irreverent, even radical ideas being espoused. Thomas Paine was writing books being censored by the Brits as sedition, and all around the European Continent, writers, thinkers, and publishers were pushing the extreme limits of their respective societies, eager to gain a foothold in a political and social climate that, for centuries, had been the exclusive domain of only the most elite. For someone like Polly who, to be frank, doesn't exactly strike me as a classy lady, to so passionately argue the inequality shown to women in matters of sex to a court, and furthermore to sway them so far as to drop her punishment and have one of the Judges marry her the next day (probably not the smartest political move on his part, but hey, times were different) points to a novel freedom never experienced in old world Europe. For the first time, it seems, the Enlightenment is giving not just a voice, but a powerful, influential voice, to the common man, and through the explosion of mediation during this era, Polly's exploits surely made their way beyond the scope of Connecticut, and very well may have encouraged other women to take a stand against the backwards and grossly unfair legislation concerning sexual crimes.