Writing Rape, Writing Women in Early Modern England : Unbridled Speech

by Catty, Jocelyn

• ISBN13: 9780312221812
• ISBN10: 0312221819
• Format: Trade Book
• Copyright: 1999-12-03
• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan

Summary

The word "rape" today denotes violent sexual appropriation; yet it originally signified the theft of a woman from her father or husband by abduction or elopement. In the early modern period, its meaning is in transition between these two senses, while rapes and attempted rapes proliferate in literature. This age also sees the emergence of the woman writer, despite a sexual ideology which equates women's writing with promiscuity. Classical myths, however, associate women's story-telling with resistance to rape. This comprehensive study covers a wide range of texts drawn from fiction, poetry and drama, by male and female writers, canonical and non-canonical, and reveals the significance of rape in the portrayal of gender-relations.

Author Biography

Jocelyn Catty is currently engaged in freelance research in London.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements	vii	(2)
Abbreviations	ix
Introduction	1	(6)
Part I Writing Rape	7	(112)
1. The Meanings of Rape	9	(16)
2. Damsels in Distress: Romance and Prose Fiction	25	(30)
3. `The subject of his tyrannie': Women and Shame in Elizabethan Poetry	55	(36)
4. `Some women love to struggle': Rape in Renaissance Drama	91	(28)
Part II Writing Women	119	(108)
5. `Here the leaf's turn'd down': Women Reading and Writing Rape	121	(13)
6. Translation and Intervention: Jane Lumley and Mary Sidney	134	(19)
7. `Vnbridled Speech': Elizabeth Cary and the Politics of Marriage	153	(29)
8. `Liberty to say anything': Lady Mary Wroth	182	(45)
Conclusion	227	(8)
Notes	235	(30)
Index	265