Multiple conflicting perspectives come together in this collection to
provide a Rashomon-style account of marriage, fraud, and trickery in
seventeenth-century England.
Mary Carleton was an ordinary woman from Canterbury who entered
historical records when she was accused of bigamy. The seven pamphlets
in this edition focus on the bigamy trial of Mary Carleton, in which the
accused eloquently defends herself and is ultimately acquitted. Written
in the early years of the English Restoration, they demonstrate that
narratives presenting what "she said" and what "he said" can reveal,
forcefully and painfully, how truth can be fragmented in the different
arenas of law, love, and politics. Through their disparate accounts of a
marriage gone wrong, these pamphlets reinforce the social status quo
even while they radically shatter the very foundations that give it
heft. In asking readers to question absolutes, they unmask the
precarious relationship between words and the world.