Barlow’s shame.

September 22, 2018 5:12 AM

Sailor's rape confession uncovered in 17th-century journal [The Guardian] “A 17th-century sailor’s confession about a rape, of which he became so ashamed that he sought to cover it up for ever, has been exposed by conservation workers who discovered the note hidden under a rewritten version in his journal. The confession went unseen for more than 300 years because the sailor pasted his second account so neatly over the top of the original that scholars missed it.”
posted by Fizz (9 comments total)

More contrite than the #metoo dudes whose lives are "ruined forever."
posted by tofu_crouton at 5:29 AM on September 22, 2018 [14 favorites]

I had assumed that "sailor's rape" meant that he had been raped, and only recognized my mistaken assumption when reading the article, because the patriarchy teaches that it's much more shameful for a man to be raped than to rape. "Youthful indiscretions" and all.

This is the second post I've read today that provides evidence that archivists are great and museums, libraries, and other repositories of our history should be fully funded.
posted by tractorfeed at 5:57 AM on September 22, 2018 [37 favorites]

He continued that though he wrote “a loving letter”, he wanted to “forget her and blot her out of my remembrance … as I had done with some before”.

It's impossible to tell whether this means that he had sexually assaulted these other women or had consensual encounters with them. That was so far from men's concerns in that time as to be completely alien from them.

He did more than other men in a) feeling bad about it and b) making his offense right in the only way that was understandable to either of them by marrying Mary and treating her with as much honor as possible. Sometimes I see an old couple who clearly loathe each other and think: how on earth did that ever even come about? This is one of the ways it might have.
posted by Countess Elena at 7:28 AM on September 22, 2018 [8 favorites]

I know it's impossible, but I really want to know Mary Symons' perspective. To confront your rapist, then marry him, then have his stillborn child and a bunch of other living kids, then to raise them essentially as a single parent while your husband is away at sea/possibly might not return....
posted by basalganglia at 8:34 AM on September 22, 2018 [20 favorites]

I posted this as a comment when The Guardian originally put this on FB, and am happy to repost it here: I cannot believe that people can still think like this curator does. An educated person in our times, who chooses to put these thoughts into words:

Roberth Blyth, a senior curator at Greenwich, who has included pages from the journal in the Tudor and Stuart navy gallery opening this week, thinks Barlow probably came back from sea, reread his journal and was horrified at how honest he had been.

“By then, he is a respectably married man, with a house and children, and he must have thought: ‘is this really the account I wish to leave of myself to history? With every voyage there’s a chance I may never return, and is this what I want my children to read about their mother?’”

Their mother did nothing wrong.
posted by fraula at 8:49 AM on September 22, 2018 [18 favorites]

An educated person in our times, who chooses to put these thoughts into words:

He is interpreting the thoughts and motives of a person in the 17th Century. Why would 'in our times' have any bearing at all on that. He'd be terrible at his job if he only interpreted historic characters through a modern perspective.
posted by Brockles at 8:59 AM on September 22, 2018 [16 favorites]

Their mother did nothing wrong.

I don't see anyone in the article saying that she did. Blyth is saying that Barlow probably realised later in life that his children wouldn't want to read about how he raped their mother.
posted by betweenthebars at 10:29 AM on September 22, 2018 [16 favorites]

I dunno, for me it was jarring to read the article’s glowing praise of a rapist’s penmanship so I get it.
posted by winna at 1:28 PM on September 22, 2018 [4 favorites]

"but that is what is technically known as bollocks,”

Just imagine if contemporary journalists had the freedom to be so forthrightly honest.

Mary Symons did nothing wrong, of course, but I wonder if the bloke's understanding of whether he did something wrong evolved over the years. They must have had conversations - did she tell him how badly he had behaved?

Anyhow, I will now mentally append "but that is what is technically known as bollocks,” to every #metoo backlash statement.
posted by Wrinkled Stumpskin at 9:06 AM on September 23, 2018 [1 favorite]