Rape and the Rise of the Author: Gendering Intention in Early Modern England (review)

As Amy Greenstadt explains, Augustinian views of sexual purity were defined by the individual's 'will', or intention (p. 2), whereby 'chastity', as 'a disposition of the will rather than a physical attribute', was unaffected by such circumstances as rape (pp. 5-6). Attitudes were not so straightforward, however, since women were accused of willingly or wilfully courting danger. As Greenstadt notes, 'Tertullian was not alone in depicting the "public exposure" of a virgin as an erotic gesture that made women responsible for their own sexual violation' (p. 20).

In Greenstadt's view, the literary theme of rape, and the discourse of rape and wider notions of feminine gendering, underpinned Early Modern authorial anxieties. While it is hardly novel to note the prominence of the rape motif in Elizabethan literature, Greenstadt's study sheds new light upon the authorial figure itself - traditionally gendered masculine - arguing that the anxious author was a feminized analogue of the rape victim. Indeed, in a further parallel between books and women, Greenstadt stresses that accusations of immodesty levelled at women were also applied to books, and, hence, to authors. Further, aside from the 'inscrutability' of 'intention', the text could, autonomously - like a woman inadvertently attracting danger - render the author vulnerable. Thus, Greenstadt cites William Prynne's unsuccessful defence of his Histriomastix (1633) - which would cost him his ears - since, though 'the court acknowledged' Prynne's claim that 'he had noe ill intencioun', it still found him liable for the interpretations of others, since 'Prynne could not "accompany his book"' (p. 7).

Authorial anxiety is also the focus of Greenstadt's reading of The Rape of Lucrece. She argues that, while Shakespeare's work and his authorial persona are perhaps conflated with the heroic Lucrece's action to 'publish' her 'will', the male characters' patriarchal appropriation of her death will rewrite her actions. By analogy, Shakespeare was expressing 'the limitations of identifying the published work with the vulnerable and subordinated ... female body' (p. 26). Indeed, the repeated word 'publish' is itself appropriated by the men, who prepare 'To show her bleeding body thorough Rome / And so to publish Tarquin's foul offence' (l. 1851; p. 79).

Arguably, the book's highlight is Chapter 3, which is devoted to Milton's Comus (1637) and the Aeropagitica (1644). They are read in relation to Milton's account of himself as a young man who upheld chastity as a quintessentially masculine virtue, founded upon austerity, in contrast to the drinking and whoring in which other students at Cambridge indulged - since Milton viewed such self-indulgence as essentially effeminate - though his attitudes, significantly, saw him nicknamed 'The Lady' (p. 90). Paradoxically, this most austere - and, clearly, misogynistic - author, thus created an ideal of authorial chastity, which is also associated with the heroine of Comus, 'the lady', who is actually threatened with rape, and whose name, revealingly, recalls Milton's own nickname (p. 85). As Greenstadt further observes, 'The fact that Comus can also be read as a story of a young woman under threat may bespeak the continuing efficacy of female chastity for a developing notion of authorship - even for Milton' (p. 129).

It was this, according to Greenstadt, which provided women writers entry 'into a pre-existing discursive field from which they were largely excluded' (p. 130) - which leads to her closing chapter, on Margaret Cavendish's Assaulted and Pursued Chastity (1656). Firstly, Greenstadt discusses Cavendish's romance, in which the heroine shoots a would-be rapist, while a subsequent heroine, actively 'ravishing', shoots a head-priest and is adored by natives as a sun-god (p. 131). Secondly, Greenstadt examines Cavendish's self-construction in her preface to Poems and Fancies (1653), in which she refuted accusations of immodesty, while elsewhere Cavendish contrasted herself favourably with classically educated male writers, whom she accused of stealing ideas. In Poems and Fancies, Cavendish...