| The literary origins of rape begin in Homer and Ovid, with gods' attempts to seduce mortal women; when the gods are refused, they resort to force to achieve the same ends. A later tradition in the New Testament is that of the Virgin Mary, impregnated through the Holy Spirit to conceive Jesus Christ. This paradigm continues, through the centuries, to blend mysticism, religion, and sexual violence together to increase the mystery or power of those conceived through rape. Thomas Malory's Morte d'Arthur uses this method to create several characters: King Arthur, Merlin, Galahad, and Mordred. Their conceptions, overall, suggest a strong relationship between a mother's purity and her future child's morality; in each case the father's strength and the mother's purity are emphasized (for Mordred, the opposite) to form the heroic child. Edmund Spenser's The Faerie Queene uses rape for the same purpose, constructing a variety of rape sequences in an attempt to prove the purity of women by erasing their sexual desire at the point of conception so that their children may be deemed pure themselves; he also uses it to test the heroines of his romance. Spenser's use of rape indicates his belief that procreation, not lust, should be the reason for both marriage and sex, especially for women, and his characters play out the possible outcomes both for delight and for moral instruction. Finally, the connection between rape and motherhood is split in Early Modern drama, especially in the plays of William Shakespeare. Women who are raped, as Lavinia in Titus Andronicus, do not become mothers; in general, women who have sex outside the marriage bed, at least in tragedies, die as a result. Mothers are usually erased from the dramatic action completely; most of Shakespeare's younger characters live without a motherly presence. Essentially, the roles of both mother and temptress are erased early or destroyed at last. The pattern of rape and motherhood, as it is modified and used throughout these various works, becomes a means by which female sexuality is negated and children can rise above their sinful humanity. |
