Interpreting Sexual Violence, 1660–1800

Anne Leah Greenfield, Anne Leah Greenfield

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781317318842
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: World History
• Index: History

The essays in this collection explore representations of and responses to sexual violence over the course of the long eighteenth century. Contributors examine the underlying ideologies that spawned these representations, confronting the social, political, legal and aesthetic conditions of the day.

INTRODUCTION

Anne Greenfield

Sexual Violence: A Favourite Subject

Few subjects were as frequently and as successfully inserted into the literary and artistic world of the Restoration and eighteenth century as was sexual violence. Depictions of sexual violence appeared regularly in novels, short fiction, tragic and comic plays, poems, the visual arts and more, with remarkable frequency during this era. In Restoration drama, this trope appears from 1662 onwards, beginning with the attempted rape of Bellmont in Thomas Porter’s The Villain. Rape and attempted rape would become staples of tragic drama, with particular frequency during the 1670s and 1680s, and again at the turn of the eighteenth century. Older plays like William Shakespeare’s King Lear (1606) were adapted and revived in the Restoration with newly-added scenes of sexual violence.¹ New tragedies that revolved around rape like Nathaniel Lee’s Mithridates (c. 1678) were great successes, and were imitated widely. However, Restoration dramatists by no means confined these sexually-violent scenes to tragic drama. Even many of the liveliest and most mirthful comedies of the Restoration, like Aphra Behn’s The Rover I (1677) and II (1681) and Thomas D’Urfey’s Trick for Trick (1678) contain frightening scenes of attempted rape. Late seventeenth-and early eighteenth-century prose fiction was equally captivated by rape and seduction. In the short fiction of Eliza Haywood and Delarivière Manley, for instance, one is hard pressed to find a text that lacks female resistance to male sexual aggression. Likewise, as the English novel began to develop into its mature form it too was highly concerned with sexual violence. The victims of rape and attempted rape in these novels are surprisingly diverse, from Amy, the loyal servant in Daniel Defoe’s Roxana (1724), to Clarissa, the middle-class, nouveau riche heroine in Samuel Richardson’s Clarissa (1748), to Evelina, the unrevealed aristocratic heiress in Frances Burney’s Evelina (1778). By the late eighteenth century, with the emergence of radical women writers like Mary Hays and Mary Wollestoncraft, one again finds great interest in the trope of sexual violence, this time in a way that redeems rape victims as socially productive figures who are able to survive their violations, even if not for long. In the visual arts, too, rape figured strongly. The myth of Lucretia alone was rendered and reproduced abundantly by painters in England and on the Continent, as seen in J. L. Gottfrid’s Historischer Chronik (1674), G. B. Tiepolo’s Tarquin and Lucretia (c. 1745–50) and Gavin Hamilton’s The Oath of Brutus (early 1760s). Even in shorter-lived and less ‘legitimate’ genres like political pamphlets, broadsides, crime narratives, erotica and pornography, one finds no shortage of sexual violence. These sexually-violent representations found their way into every decade of the Restoration and eighteenth century, into nearly every genre and into the minds of many, many readers and viewers.

The remarkable prevalence of the trope of sexual violence is matched by its astonishing flexibility. In the hands of writers and artists of this period, sexual violence was used for a wide variety of, often seemingly contradictory, ends. For instance, Whig dramatists advocating the doctrine of resistance and social contract theory regularly depicted cruel tyrant-rapists whose sexually-violent crimes illustrated the need to overthrow unjust rulers. On the other hand, with an opposing agenda, Tory dramatists advocating the divine right of kings depicted cruel rebel-rapists whose sexual brutalities illustrated the atrocities that resulted when a monarch was overthrown. Taking yet another tack, writers of turn-of-the-century amatory fiction depicted ‘seductions’ that were (simultaneously and ambiguously) both welcomed and forced. These writers of amatory fiction used sexual violence to create narratives with strong political subtexts that grappled with the complex question of whether resistance to legitimate authority can ever be virtuous. With the rise of the novel, sexual violence was again depicted variously and unevenly: this trope was at times represented solemnly and centrally as in Samuel Richardson’s Clarissa and Pamela, while elsewhere humorously and peripherally as in Henry Fielding’s Tom Jones and Joseph Andrews. Not only did the trope of sexual violence vary from author to author, but even within single works, this trope could be put to opposing ends. Sexual violence could be used simultaneously to terrify and titillate audiences, or to make martyrs and whores out of the same female characters. Few other literary and artistic tropes were used for such antithetical purposes.

Part of the reason for the popularity and ubiquity of this trope lies in the importance of chastity in the seventeenth-and eighteenth-century collective imagination. When kept intact, a woman’s chastity ensured that her husband reared his actual, biological children, and that her husband’s inheritance was passed down to his legitimate successors. As a theft of chastity, rape was understood as a violation against men, as a theft of everything a man owned and achieved and as a fissure in the most basic structure of social order. When enacted upon a chaste woman (and, especially, a propertied chaste woman), sexual violence was theoretically believed to be a devastating crime to be prevented and punished at all costs. With such high stakes associated with the threat of lost chastity, writers of this era found a useful rhetorical device in the trope of sexual violence. Writers vilified their political enemies by painting them as rapists, they illustrated the breakdown of social order through the rapes of chaste wives and daughters and they terrified readers with the devastating losses that followed forceful ‘seductions’. Because the threat of stolen chastity was believed to be a universally-detested crime, the trope of sexual violence could easily imbue a scene with power, suspense and gravity.

Another reason for the prevalence of sexual violence in art and literature of the period comes from sheer precedent. Eighteenth-century writers and readers were well aware of the long tradition of rape and attempted-rape depictions in Western literature. The anonymous poem, ‘The Rape of the Bride’ (1723) acknowledges this canon of rape depictions in its opening canto, which recounts a remarkable twenty-one mythical and historical acts of sexual violence in just two pages. These references span from sexual violations in classical Rome (such as Tarquin’s rape of Lucrece) and Greece (for example, Agammenon’s rape of Breseis), to accounts of fantastical sodomy (like the moon’s rape of the young boy, Endymion), to metaphors of rape (the rape of the day by the night), to non-sexual injuries that are called ‘rapes’ (for example, the rapes of fruit, flowers and land by human cultivation). Rape, in this view, is not only a phenomenon that has, as the anonymous poet puts it, ‘happen’d, on the Earth, / Since Mother Nature’s early Birth’,² but rape is also part of a long tradition of literary writing in the West. In an age when classical authors and their works were venerated and imitated widely, this literary precedent acted as a strong catalyst for English writers in appropriating the theme of sexual violence.

Doubtless, authors of this era adopted the trope of sexual violence for other reasons as well. For instance, a rape scene provided many a dramatist with the welcome excuse to display a beautiful actress, post violation, in a torn gown with unbound hair and a revealed bosom. Elsewhere, in the late eighteenth century, scenes of sexual violence served the purposes of radical women writers who wished to paint rape as a violation of a women’s sexual autonomy, rather than as a mere property crime. In other hands still, the trope of sexual violence was turned on its head, as a topic of irreverence and wit, as in Henry Fielding’s Rape Upon Rape or Alexander Pope’s ‘The Rape of the Lock’ – both of which depended for their humour on the fact that rape was elsewhere treated as such a devastating and grave matter. Indeed, part of the appeal of the trope of sexual violence was that it could be used to grapple with and discuss a huge variety of issues. Writers found that their messages about gender, the legal system, inheritance, the passions, the body, resistance to authority, the family, social hierarchies – and so much more – could be discussed adeptly in stories that revolved around sexual violence. The usefulness and power behind this trope comes in large part from the ways in which sexual violence reflected so many other seventeenth- and eighteenth-century ideas, values and anxieties. Thus, not only does sexual violence stand out as a uniquely-prevalent and flexible trope, but it also acts as an important index to the underlying ideologies of this era.

This collection examines sexual violence in light of its striking complexity and flexibility, across a 140-year timespan and in a variety of genres. As this collection demonstrates, it is the malleability of the rape trope that made it such a success with so many authors, artists, readers and viewers at this time. Today, we often assume that rape and sexual assault have always been understood as universally-shameful and barbaric crimes. However, this trope abounded in literary and artistic communities, not because it was timelessly devastating but, because this trope was flexible enough to satisfy a variety of aesthetic, political and ideological purposes, all the while reflecting something destructive enough to ensure that readers would be intrigued, compelled or persuaded by its presence, whatever the form.

Sexual Violence in Context

Historical context, while important in interpreting literature of any variety from any era, is essential when investigating Restoration and eighteenth-century depictions of sexual violence. During this period, scenes of sexual violence mirrored and responded to mainstream ideologies of medical science, human sexuality, gender-relations, patriarchy, inheritance, violence, the law and much more. Without a proper understanding of how sexual violence was understood within these concurrent ideological contexts, a modern reader will likely be puzzled by the conventions used to represent this trope three centuries ago. For instance, one might wonder, why were raped tragic heroines always portrayed as virtuous and chaste? Why did they so often die after their sexual violations? And why did these characters receive so much attention and concern from their male kin, even though actual raped women had very little public sympathy and legal recourse at this time? It is only after one interprets depictions of sexual violence in light of contemporary ideologies that one can make sense of the above patterns. Historical context reveals, in answer to the above questions, that writers portrayed raped heroines as virtuous and chaste because they had to dispel contemporary assumptions that women accusing rape were promiscuous and untrustworthy. Likewise, writers often made their raped heroines die after their violations because, at the time, raped women were viewed as irreparably polluted, and, thus, letting a raped heroine die of grief or suicide was an excellent way of resolving her otherwise problematic future. Finally, raped characters garnered high levels of attention and concern from their male kin because, during this period, rape was largely conceived of as a property crime against fathers and husbands, and writers thus tended to emphasize the impact rapes had on victims’ male relatives above the impact on the victims themselves. It is crucial, therefore, that one interprets Restoration and eighteenth-century representations of sexual violence in light of the contemporary ideologies that informed them.

In this vein, it is worth pausing at the outset to delineate how ‘sexual violence’ was understood by the English public of the Restoration and eighteenth century, as well as how the term will be used throughout this collection. The relationship between attitudes then and now is a complex one. On the one hand, many modern-day myths about rape carry a direct lineage to the eighteenth century. For instance, today’s blame-the-victim attitudes towards female rape victims who are accused of ‘asking for it’ through their promiscuous attire or behaviour harkens back to the connection between rape and chastity seen so prominently during the eighteenth century and before. In one of many examples that could be cited, former US congressman Todd Akin’s 2012 comments on the incompatibility of pregnancy with ‘legitimate rape’ bears a notable resemblance to the long eighteenth-century view that female orgasm was required for conception (and therefore ‘true’ rape could not result in pregnancy).³ On the other hand, however, there are enormous differences between the ways sexual violence has generally been understood in the long eighteenth century and today. In fact, a look at the ways in which ‘sexual violence’ has been defined, responded to, tolerated and lamented over the last three hundred and fifty years reveals vast differences.

One of the greatest indicators of just how much attitudes towards sexual violence have changed over the centuries, lies in the changing definition of ‘rape’, the most salient and extreme form of sexual violence. Perhaps the greatest difference between definitions of ‘rape’ then and now lies in its breadth: the term ‘rape’ is far more heterogeneous and encompassing today than it was three centuries ago. In large part due to 1970s’ efforts to protect more victims and to punish more assailants, we have expanded our understanding of rape to be more inclusive of both myriad victims and myriad sex acts. Today, rape victims can be chaste and unchaste, male and female, young and old. Likewise today, acts of rape can be committed by men and women, with or without penetration and ejaculation and they can be enacted on more than one area of the body. The greater inclusiveness of this term, however, has not led to greater concord. We can, perhaps, agree on a basic, modern-day definition of ‘rape’ such as, sex without the consent of one party. However, the ambiguities underlying such a definition are apparent. One has only to ask, for instance, whether rape requires penetration (and if so, are vaginal, anal and oral penetration counted equally?), or whether other forced sexual activity (such as violent fondling) can also be classified as ‘rape’? What if the non-consenting party changes his/her mind during the sex act, is intoxicated, is unsure whether s/he consents, or isn’t sure s/he was raped? Little consensus has been reached on these and many other questions – and, in fact, many of us hold ambiguous and even contradictory views on rape today.

Competing dictionary definitions of ‘rape’ reveal some of the ambiguities that underpin our modern-day understandings of this term. For instance, the Oxford English Dictionary defines rape as ‘the act of forced, non-consenting, or illegal sexual intercourse with another person; sexual violation or assault’.⁴ On the other hand, Miriam-Webster defines rape as ‘unlawful sexual activity and usually sexual intercourse carried out forcibly or under threat of injury against the will usually of a female or with a person who is beneath a certain age or incapable of valid consent’.⁵ Note that while Miriam-Webster defines rape as unlawful, the Oxford English Dictionary makes lawfulness a mere sufficient condition (rather than a necessary condition) of rape. Likewise, while Miriam-Webster assumes that this act is usually carried out against females, the Oxford English Dictionary makes no such stipulation. Little is settled even by these ‘standard’ definitions of the term.

While the meaning of rape has expanded in recent decades, the term was markedly narrow during the Restoration and eighteenth century. At that time, in order for a sex act to be understood as rape, it had to take a specific form (for example, heterosexual, penetrating), between specific sorts of people (for example, a chaste woman usually of equal or higher social status to her assailant) and accusations had to be made at specific times and in specific ways (usually within twenty-four hours of the sex act). Complicating scenarios that make it difficult for twenty-first-century thinkers to agree upon a definition of ‘rape’ (such as, when a victim changes her mind midway through the sex act) would have troubled no one during the Restoration and eighteenth century. Any sex act that failed to cohere with the above, highly-narrow definition of rape was decidedly understood as not rape.

Part of the impetus behind the narrowness of this definition during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries was that rape, above all, was understood as the theft of a woman’s chastity. Thus, any sort of forced sex that did not result in lost chastity (i.e. the rape of a woman who had already parted with her chastity) was almost never prosecutable under the law. William Blackstone makes this point clear in his 1765–9 observation that not all women were believed to be legally qualified to press charges for rape: ‘The civil law seems to suppose a prostitute or common harlot incapable of any injuries of this kind [rape]’.⁶ Trial transcripts from this period abound with female accusers whose claims of rape were promptly dismissed after they were found to be (or merely accused of being) unchaste. In fact, the association between rape and stolen chastity can be seen in nearly all definitions of ‘rape’ during these centuries. For instance, in A Dictionary of the English Language, Samuel Johnson defines ‘rape’ as the ‘Violent defloration of chastity’,⁷ and John Brydall defines ‘rape’ as ‘the violent deflouring [sic] of a Woman against her will’.⁸ This equation of rape with lost chastity is reaffirmed again and again in the literature of this era: in tragic and serious works, rape victims are always female (a man has no chastity to lose), they are either virginal daughters or loyal wives (illustrating that their chastity was intact when the rape occurred), they are almost never wives raped by husbands (for a husband cannot steal what he already owns) and they are pristinely modest and pious (further emphasizing the claim that they would never have parted with their chastity before it was forced from them). Thus, even though the trope of rape was highly flexible and could be used in disparate ways, the prevailing understanding of ‘rape’ as stolen chastity meant that writers and artists were significantly limited in whom they could depict as rape victims and what sorts of violations they could classify as rapes. What mattered most during the Restoration and eighteenth century was, not whether sexual violence generally had occurred but, whether chastity had been compromised.

While this collection is firmly focused on the ways in which sexual violence was represented and understood during the Restoration ...