Cynthis A. Kierner skillfully illuminates the mindset of Virginia's planter gentry through the scandalous legal drama that beset the Randolph family in 1790s Virginia. The accusations against Richard Randolph, that he had possibly impregnated his wife's unwed sister Nancy and then helped her terminate said pregnancy, were an affront to everything upper-class conventions at the time considered respectable. Thus, Richard sought to publicly defend his personal and family honor in the face of rumors that originated among enslaved people but soon spread far and wide enough to concern his kin Thomas Jefferson. Kierner's treatment of the story depicts an aristocratic culture defending its mores as, "the political and economic changes of the revolutionary era weakened Virginians' habitual deference toward their society's traditional elites." (43) In doing so we see concepts of honor and family, as well as sex and gender, brought before the public eye to be dissected.
This idea of an 'honor based society' reflects many of the themes shown in the Cook's treatment of Francisco Noguero. In Franciso's world reputation and wealth are synonymous as it is for the Randolph's. This is important for it demonstrates to us the ways that privilege and status were bound to certain behaviors which included sexual conduct. And interestingly Kierner seems to postulate that these behavioral norms were subject to the scrutiny of public opinion, even when the members of that public included slaves. There is no court higher than the court public opinion and this was certainly true post-revolutionary Virginia.
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