J'Accuse: A Medieval Crime and the Servant Girl Who Changed History

She was a servant with no voice. He was a predator with powerful friends. She refused to stay silent--and changed history.

"Jennifer D. Thibodeaux's skill as a medieval historian and a storyteller shines. Jeanne Corvière's story, never told before, is as terrible as it is empowering. It will haunt you, both for the familiarity of the crime against Jeanne and the grit she shows in changing her world for the better. Read this book to learn an incredible true story that will embolden you, too." -- Beth Allison Barr, author of The Making of Biblical Womanhood

Normandy, 1429. The Hundred Years' War rages, Joan of Arc is leading the resistance, and the English occupy the land. In the midst of this chaos, a young, lowborn servant named Jeanne Corvière attends a hiring fair, hoping for a fresh start. Instead, she meets a sergeant of the law who lures her away with a lie about a wife in labor.

What follows is a brutal assault in a dense forest and a shocking act of corruption. When Corvière seeks justice, she discovers the investigation has been mysteriously rigged. But she refuses to accept defeat. She launches a decade-long legal battle that takes her to the high courts of Rouen. Her quest for justice will shake the very foundations of the French legal system.

It is a pattern we know all too well: predatory behavior by men of elite classes whose victims are women of a lower status, whose bodies they believe they can appropriate. Many women in Corvière's place would have given up. But she did not.

Jeanne Corvière's riveting true story has never been told, until now.

Jennifer D. Thibodeaux is a medieval historian. She first discovered the existence of the Corvière v. Le Mire case in an inventory catalog in 2017. To reconstruct the story, the author traveled to the Archives Départementales de Seine-Maritime in Rouen where she analyzed and translated the legal records for the first time. Dr. Thibodeaux is dedicated to bringing the stories of marginalized women out of the shadows and into the historical record.