SOLON Law, Crime and History (previously SOLON Crimes and Misdemeanours: Deviance and the Law in Historical Perspective)
Document Type
Article
Abstract
This essay concerns the history of extortion in American law and culture, highlighting the shift from extortion as a paradigmatically male enterprise to one inseparably associated with women. Before the nineteenth-century, extortion was figured as an assault on a victim’s consent. Since men monopolized consent, extortion unfolded as a contest between legal subjects over political manhood. After the mid-nineteenth-century, a new class of ‘respectable’ victims, openly terrified by women’s threats, made unprecedented claims for legal protection. In response, well-placed courts wrote consent out of the equation, broadening the scope of extortionous threats to unleash the familiar fin-de-siècle tide of sex scandal.
Publication Date
2013-01-01
Publication Title
SOLON Law, Crime and History
Volume
3
Issue
2
First Page
1
Last Page
29
ISSN
2045-9238
Embargo Period
2024-10-21
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Recommended Citation
Bonica, Joseph S.
(2013)
"The Unmanly Fear: Extortion Before the Twentieth Century,"
SOLON Law, Crime and History (previously SOLON Crimes and Misdemeanours: Deviance and the Law in Historical Perspective): Vol. 3:
Iss.
2, Article 9.
Available at:
https://pearl.plymouth.ac.uk/solon/vol3/iss2/9
