A Twisted Romance: Abduction and Rape in Stanley John Weyman's The Castle Inn

A Twisted Romance: Abduction and Rape in Stanley John Weyman's The Castle Inn C. Anita Tarr Illinois State University DURING THE 1890S in England, a new name emerged as a popular romance novelist: Stanley John Weyman. He became equally as well known as his compatriots H. Rider Haggard and Arthur Conan Doyle, but has since faded into obscurity. While Weyman employed the stereotypical fainting females, dashing heroes, and churlish villains, he also satirized the romance genre by offering stories told by bumbling protagonists who happen upon adventure, helped by strong-willed females who meet obstacles head-on: a kind of anti-gothicism mediated by elements from Restoration comedy. Instead of simply employing the formulaic plot device of the abduction of a helpless woman, Weyman was able to offer a comment on the commodification of women by including the abduction of a woman as a plot device, and then allowing the device to self-destruct because of its absurdity. Weyman was no feminist, but he was conscientious enough not to simply repeat the patriarchal, hierarchical values that subordinated both women and the lower classes. Although he was positively afraid of anarchic mob action (a common element in his novels), he promoted, at least in some novels, more equality and gentle cooperation between the sexes and the social classes. Even though Weyman employed abduction in several stories, including The Abbess of Vlaye (1898) and Queen's Folly (1904), it is in The Castle Inn (1898) that he gives it full treatment. He was able to use kidnapping both for its inherent suspense and also for its symbol of male domination. In The Castle Inn, Weyman was drawing on a very familiar 63 ELT 39:1 1996 story for his turn-of-the-century audience and then turning it on its head; that is, he offers an ironic reading of Greek mythology's heroes through frequent allusions to the Trojan War and, thereby, a social comment upon the Western society that inherited this mythology's patriarchal ideals. The Castle Inn (1898) is set in England in 1767. Along with frequent references to characters in Greek mythology, the chapter titles are what give us clues to the Trojan War, as they include "Achilles and Briséis" and "A Greek Gift," but "A Knight Errant" and "St. George and the Dragon" also suggest the chivalric code that grew out of myth. Weyman's first career was as a lawyer, a graduate of Oxford, so as an educated writer he teases his presumably educated readers with chapter titles from the Iliad they would be sure to recognize. Ready to accept the untried conviction that Greek warriors and medieval knights were noble, readers must have been surprised to find Weyman ridiculing Olympian heroes for the way they treat women as property or war booty. Readers today may still harbor misconceptions about ancient literature 's so-called heroes. Scholars of classical literature have contributed quite a bit of disinformation concerning the male-female relationships in Greek mythology. Over the centuries, scholars have been too patronizing or prudish. As Leo Curran explains, scholars have euphemized violence against females as "courtship" or "amours," for example, when what was actually occurring was rape.1 Zeus, as a bull, abducted and then raped Europa. Similarly, Hades abducted and raped Persephone, no matter that she subsequently became his queen for part of the year. Edith Hamilton's classic edition of mythological tales has very clear captions at the bottom of two of the illustrations: 'The rape of Persephone"2 and "The rape of Europa."3 Nevertheless, Hamilton herself does not use "rape" in her telling of these stories, nor does she comment on them. Curran suggests that scholars' reticence has actually contributed to the "preservation of our society's patriarchal mythology of rape."4 Typically, especially in the Iliad and other Greek tales, women are seduced, betrayed, raped, enslaved—made victims of by not only mortal males but gods as well. The father of all gods, Zeus, is most famous for his philandering, taking advantage of various nymphs and other females by assuming animal form. Apollo, the god of truth, pursues the nymph Daphne whose only escape is to become a tree...