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Title: Sex, Law, and Society in Late Imperial China by Mathew H. Sommer, Matthew Harvey Sommer ISBN: 0-8047-4559-5 Publisher: Stanford Univ Pr Pub. Date: June, 2002 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $23.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.5 (2 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: A very serious and difficult book
Comment: Reviewers need to bear in mind that this work is not intended to be easy: it demands substantial effort on the part of the reader. The painstaking archival research that the author conducted for this book--he read document after document in Chinese archives pertaining to Ming and Qing-dynasty court cases--lends this book a unique authority. Some more general books may have arguments that are easier to digest, but Sommer shows you case by case how sex crimes were really conceived and prosecuted. This is an unprecedented study of sex in late imperial Chinese legal thinking and practice, but it is not light reading and may not be ideal as an introduction to the subject.
Rating: 2
Summary: Not entirely without merit.
Comment: This book is not entirely without merit. The amount of research the author has done is awesome - he copied out some 600 memorials on marital, sex offences, and family disputes, from the Beijing Archives alone. A further 80 memorials in the same category, were also copied from records in provincial bureaus. However, only a relatively small number of these cases are cited, presumably since the number of different types of sex type of crime is limited.
Illicit sex, rape and sodomy, are discussed in detail, but paedophilia is not considered as a separate subject, and is simply included under the heading of "rape," even when penile penetration did not take place and was just sexual molestation of young children. The subject of incest is ignored completely.
He gives brief details of what he calls the "ideal rapist," and records that most rapists were in their twenties or thirties, and his sample indicates that 67 percent had lowly or stigmatized occupations, including 22 agricultural laborers, one beggar, one barber, one soldier and three men out of work. Fourteen had more "respectable" occupations, mostly peasants, but two tailors, and one mat weaver. Most were poor. Most were unmarried. His conclusion is that the "ideal" rapist is young, "without property, status, family, or prospects - and hence with little stake in the social order."
He also gives brief details of the "ideal rape victim." Out of a sample of 50, twenty-eight were married, thirteen were unmarried daughters living at home, and seven were girls who were betrothed. Thirty-seven (74 percent) were raped at home. Eighteen of the victims suffered death by homicide or suicide. Eleven of the victims were eleven years of age or under. The author does not differentiate between penile penetration of these youngsters and molestation.
The sheer volume of cases the author has collected seems to have overwhelmed him, and the book becomes dangerously close to being redolent with statistics without reasoned resolution. One is drawn to the conclusion from reading this book that while rape, sodomy, and marital disputes unquestionably occurred during the Yuan, Ming, and Qing times, the percentage of court cases is relatively small, considering the size of the population.
The author boldly faces the unpleasant details of the cases, and does not shun cases of sadism and torture. He states that he owes a debt to his father, an Urologist, for his lack of squeamishness when talking about sex and the body. He says he has "not glossed over the details, and have avoided euphemism, and at time my treatment may seem detached, if not callous." In spite of this, or maybe because of this, the author's style of writing is difficult to read, and gets dangerously close to being boring. Some of the more complex cases urgently need clearer analysis and revision.
As a final point, it should be said that there is nothing salacious or prurient about this book. The author is truly detached, if not callous in his approach. There is much information in this book, and this makes it valuable, particularly to the specialist academic, but it must have a very limited audience
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