Age of Consent in Fiction

[gehayi]

erastes is blogging today over about age of consent in fiction. I wanted to reply, but I couldn't; Blogspot limits comments to 4096 characters. (Cripes, even LJ does better than that.) So I thought I'd post here and leave a link there.

Sometimes I wonder how George R. R. Martin got away with it in his A Song of Ice and Fire series. For those who haven't

Comments

[gehayi]

Oh, don't get me started about Pocahontas.

I found the history of Pocahontas last week on the Powhatan tribe's website. Did you know that John Smith first came up with the "Pocahontas saved my brains from being beaten out" story SEVENTEEN YEARS AFTER the supposed event? Pocahontas's brothers told a very different story. They said that Smith was always treated well by their father and was never mistreated in any way. Pocahontas herself was so disgusted by the idea that when she ran into Smith in London, she turned her back to him and hid. When Smith showed up at the house where she was staying, she called him a liar to his face and showed him the door.

Not only that, but Smith thought this story was so nice, he told it twice. Seems that before he came to America, he was a soldier for hire. He was fighting in Hungary at one point...and then showed up in Russian Georgia. When found, he said that he'd been captured in Hungary by Turks, taken to Turkey, and sold as a slave. His alleged owner, Tragbigzanda (does that even SOUND like a Turkish name?) was supposedly the wife of a pasha. According to Smith, she fell in love with him and risked her own life to help him escape.

So let's recap: two women of high status within non-white cultures allegedly risked their lives to save Smith's out of love and compassion for him.

Uh...yeah.

The end of Pocahontas's story was sad, too. When she was eighteen, she was captured by English soldiers and held hostage, supposedly because her father had stolen arms and armaments from the English. (Personal bet--the English were selling to Powhatan privately, and everything was fine until Governor Gates found out.) The English tried to get Powhatan to trade the arms for Pocahontas; Powhatan apparently believed that she was already dead, and refused.

So Pocahontas was brought to Jamestown, and put in the custody of Gates. When he left, her custody passed to Governor Dale.

John Rolfe (a widower) arrived with Dale. He saw Pocahontas and decided he was going to marry her. The governor agreed...provided Rolfe took her to England. Rolfe agreed. And so Pocahontas was forcibly converted and forcibly married, and taken to England.

She didn't live long after that. Shortly after she gave birth to her son, she caught a "mysterious illness" and died. What the illness was, I don't know. It could have been anything from measles to puerperal fever.

Poor girl. I'll bet she wished that she HAD had Smith's head beaten in. It would have been better for her.

[minkhollow]

It would not entirely surprise me if John Smith was a model for Captain Hammer. We read bits of his travel-journal thing in high school; man thought he was The Shiznit.

[lee_rowan]

Yes-from all accounts Smith was a jackass, and it's a shame Powhatan didn't clobber him. Then too, it's a pity the original residents of New England didn't have stronger immigration laws and better weapons...