Symposium—Beyond Prosecution: Sexual Assault Victim’s Rights in Theory and Practice Symposium
At the end of Katherine Hepburn’s closing argument on behalf of a woman charged with trying to kill her philandering husband in the 1949 film Adam’s Rib, Hepburn tells the jury about an ancient South American civilization in which the men, made weak and puny by years of subservience, are ruled by women. She offers this anthropological anecdote in order to move the jury to understand why a woman, whose ”natural” feminine constitution should render her incapable of murder, might turn to violence. Lest the jury not understand the point, she makes it plainer. “Every living being is capable of attack if sufficiently provoked,” she argues. “Assault lies dormant within us all. It requires only circumstance to set it in violent motion” . . . .