Male Dishonor as Guilt and Shame in The Rape of Lucrece Essay

Fear of cuckoldry is widely known theme in medieval and Renaissance English literature. Fear of cuckoldry was also a widespread fear in English society during those eras. Men often treated their wives as possessions. Once men and women married, divorce was almost impossible, especially since it was almost impossible to prove that one had been cuckolded. If one were cuckolded and one’s wife had another man’s child, one might spend decades taking care of that child and passing on one’s money and belongings to that child without ever knowing that one had been deceived. Unmarried women are seen as their fathers ' property and the play 's two marriages are marked by jealousy and cruelty. Most

While on the way to venerate Saint Thomas Becket’s remains, the entertainment of Chaucer’s Canterbury pilgrims falls upon the requiting of stories between the different estates. However, this requiting quickly turns malicious, the Host’s simple proposition evolving into an aggressive show of social dominance that includes the boasting of both literal and metaphorical rape. The normalization (or, borderline reverence) of aggressive manliness contributes to the creation of both rape culture and compulsory heterosexuality. Consequently, when a man does not dominate a woman—or, does not use his masculinity to humiliate another man—he is seen as weak or effeminate, subsequently placing his sexuality under scrutiny. Such is the motive behind John and Aleyn’s rape of the miller’s wife and daughter—to make Symkin seem weak, and to gain a reputation of superior masculinity. Thus,

There are many double standards going on with male and female honour and fidelity. With males, they do not seem to have any sexual boundaries. They are not expected to have any fidelity and are excused if they cheat on the partner. Men do not need to keep chastity before marriage. This however is not the case for women. If they do any of these things then they are condemned and are no longer respectable women in society. I think that by Shakespeare repeating these themes throughout the play he shows quite a feminist approach. Rather than go along with the idea that in fact the girls should be punished he genuinely makes us feel attached for those characters. Perhaps an example of this would be Beatrice, although she comes over as a woman who isn’t innocent Shakespeare is careful to keep reminding us she is virtuous.

Prout was frustrated that Labrie “was cleared of felony sexual assault charges” because the jury supposed that he committed the act unknowingly (Hauser A13). Socrates would argue on behalf of Proust and would want the unjust man to suffer the proper consequences. In a dialogue with Polus, Socrates even claims that the wrongdoers “are completely wretched, yet even more wretched if they are not punished” (Plato 36). While the Platonic framework can support the frustration of both Proust and Socrates because the offender did not receive proper penalties, the victim’s openness about the crime embraces the True and encourages others to demand control of their bodies. Proust’s willingness to talk about sexual assault exposed “sexual conquest at St. Paul’s” (Hauser A13). Socrates believed that every question should have an answer and the truth should be acknowledged; similarly, Proust hopes to uncover the secrets of sexual violence at her school and prevent injustice from happening. Both cases reflect the importance of rightful punishment and accepting the True for the Good of

(2) In defending themselves, they lacked rhetorical and procedural strategies due to the nature of a patriarchal law system which did not recognize legitimate female rights, the importance of privacy in procedures, or the ability to mitigate their crimes by claiming the clergy and escaping death. (4) However, despite the death sentences in many trials of women, the concept of equity, the legal principle by which formal application of written statues and absolute legal principles is mitigated or remedied by extenuating individual circumstances, can be found in their trials, representations, and execution behaviors. (5) By examining this concept, he seeks to illuminate a divide between hierarchical judicial order and Protestant principles of mercy and forgiveness. Martin’s previous work in preserving and replicating the relevant sources give him an uncanny knowledge of the material, and it shows in his discussion of the evaluation of sources, rarely in narrative or dialectic style. However, his experience often renders the book full of technical jargon and difficult to

This essay compares the Ancient Greek speech "Against the Stepmother" and an episode of Law and Order: Special Victims Unit entitled "Legitimate Rape", with the purpose to display the ways the court cases depicted in both the speech and television episode are both similar and different. "Against the Stepmother" consists of a young man accusing his stepmother for killing his father and was written in Athens between 420 to 411 BC. The Law and Order: Special Victims Unit episode "Legitimate Rape" was aired on March 27, 2013, and depicts a court case dealing with a woman named Avery accusing her co-worker, Purcell, of rape and stalking. Despite the temporal and cultural differences, there are significant similarities in regards to the use of rhetoric and evidence. Yet, there are immense differences between these two such as the use of lawyers and police in modern cases and the need to appeal to Gods in Ancient Greek times which vastly segregates the two cases.

Interestingly, when Brutus swears to avenge the crimes against Lucretia instead of targeting Sextus he goes straight after Tarquin. Entitlement of the Kings was likely more offensive to Brutus than the rape. Further, based on the status of women in Rome at the time it’s quite possible the people were more enraged at her loss of dignity or reputation than the actual rape. Ultimately many of the Roman people not in the ruling class viewed themselves in similar roles as Lucretia’s Husband, Father, and friend for the purpose avenging the oppressive wrongs done by the Kingdom. These were the Roman people that aspired to the same virtuous principles of courage, moral authority and dignity that Lucretia called upon in her time of need. Principled motivations such as these Roman virtues proved to be a crushing force on the Roman Kingdom while helping to usher in the era of the Roman

Before his death the Trojan leader Hector exclaims, “Well let me die⎼but not without struggle, not without glory, no, in some great clash of arms that even men to come will hear of down the years,” (22.359-362). This proclamation reveals an important theme in Homer’s Iliad. Throughout the epic poem, the concept of honor and shame constantly reappears, from being the cause of the plot to personification as Greek and Trojan heroes to the dichotomy of honor and shame within the gods. Homer uses honor and shame as a major theme of the Iliad to show how important these attributes are to the human condition.

This was the first time, in a big way, that people started to make connections between rape and “sexual fantasies” by examining popular culture and media. Rape culture has been evident in society looking as far back as 900 BC to the ancient Greek society. Raping women was commonplace in Greek mythology. Most stories involving Zeus, the king of the Gods, revolve around him disguising himself as a human and raping women. A lot of the women Zeus seduced and consequently raped were later punished by Hera, his jealous wife. Hera’s actions can be seen as the first form of victim shaming as she blames the women for what happened and punishes them for it. Hera could not do anything to change her husband’s habits so it was just accepted that she punish the helpless victims instead. This supports the common notion that “boys will be boys,” that men simply “cannot help themselves,” or that their sexual needs and desires wholeheartedly “control” their actions. Another example is the story of Medusa. She was not always the monster she is commonly portrayed to be. Medusa’s story is that Poseidon, the God of the sea, takes advantage of and rapes her in Athena’s Temple. Instead of dealing punishment to her uncle, the God Poseidon, Athena punished

However, the medieval man was socially, culturally and communally confined, to this belief system that held men and their masculinity to a narrow standard. When rapist or rape culture began to no longer be tolerated it was still with exception. And, when a young man didn’t rape a woman, he was still obliged to control or dominate her. The point being made is, though there

In his essay in Bad Shakespeare, Anthony Dawson seems to disagree with this interpretation of the story. He states that this universal and idealized approach to the play is ineffective for a number of reasons. He

In the realm of ancient western literature, the nature of and relationship among men, women and the divine is often times manifested through the sinfulness of men, the diminishment of women’s value, and the rightfulness of the divine. One such case is Genesis 19 and Judges 19 of the Hebrew Bible, two similar narratives about rape. From a modern biblical point of view, the writers of Judges 19 deliberately situated the characters in similar positions as those in Genesis 19, but included their own telling on women’s destiny to illustrate how women are treated different societies. The two narratives together explain that men are sinful toward women if not for divine intervention. In particular, the narratives’ contrasting endings show that women

The manifestation of Chaucer’s perceptions lie in the actual tale as well as the prologue of The Wife of Bath when power is no more than momentarily relinquished to a man non-consensually through rape. Power is hastily regained by women when the rapist’s fate is put

-The earliest laws against rape were actually property protection laws. The crime was not considered to be against the woman, but against her father or husband, the people responsible for her sexual conduct.

In Eliza Haywood's "Love in Excess" rape is portrayed as something that is not seen as a stigma, but rather generalized into the society as an expression of "love" by men, to which women have to adhere to without protesting, and ultimately having to give into matrimony with their assailant. Hence, it was used for domesticating single women. This ideology was what inflicted Delmont to make an attempt of almost raping Meliossa, but here is where Haywood's magic comes, instead of him breaking the virtue of Melisa, he himself is raped by the sexually aggressive Melantha. Though the word "rape" is never mentioned throughout the book, Haywood's decision of flipping gender roles in this particular part of the text is ingenious in depicting the plight of women at that time. Though in the aftermath of the event, the situation is never addressed or brought up, the fact that Delmont did feel sexually violated can be seen in the lines “he stood like one transfixed with thunder, he knew not what to think”. 1 Later, angry at and disgusted by the experience, he “detest[s]” Melantha “for the trick she had put upon him.”(Haywood)