MDDM Ch. 73

[Paul Mackin]

Terrance Flaherty wrote:

None of the men on Mason's crew is ever flogged.

Pynchon may not  report on the flogging of free misbehavers, but if there
had been, say,  disserters,  and if they had been caught,  it seems pretty
likely that flogging would have been their due--based on what we know about
the harshness of colonial period punishment. With or without the benefit of
a legal magistrate.  Just as disobedient wives and children were subject to
flogging with legal impunity by the head of the household.

Pynchon tones down the harshness of the times.

P.