(Untitled)

[asimplechord]

Reading Anne Perry's Midnight At Marble Arch. Victorian London-set mystery. At one point a society gentleman says, "But that sounds monstrous to me, callous and brutal. It is almost like consenting that rape is okay, by omission of defense

Comments

[a_carnal_mink]

Okay is a really big bugbear of a word for me. Victorian London you say? I'd only accept that if the character is from the US or has spent a significant amount of recent time there. And even then, not if the actual time-frame is anything prior to about 1880.

(I know that's not the actual same bugbear you were having with the phrasing, but it pinged mine. *grin*)

[asimplechord]

That was one of the things that pinged me. When did okay enter the lexicon, and when did it become acceptable use? I still think it's not acceptable for formal use, really.

But on top of that, the construction of one sentence to another is so different, and the shift in tone is odd, even if it were a word that someone of that time and social class would use...

[sunn_doyouknow]

It seems highly unlikely to me that any Victorian English gentleman would have even considered the issue of consent, let alone use the words "okay" or "rape". Those just weren't things that were part of the vocabulary then, especially in the high society set.

[asimplechord]

Right, it's odd to me on two levels. I can imagine that individual men of that era might consider consent issues, but not as a broad class, and definitely not using those terms. But then I wondered if I wasn't giving them enough credit? Because my understanding of the idea of women's reproductive rights basically begins with Margaret Sanger in the US, and that was... maybe 1910 or 1920? I assume that London and other urban centers of bohemian culture had people who felt and acted the same, but I don't know who/when they would've acted.