Tuesday, October 8, 2013

Rape in the Middle Ages

(Trigger warning for rape, obviously.)

(Also warning that I’m totally not a historian and I could be getting everything horribly, horribly wrong in this post. Please forgive me, Dr. MB, if I’m butchering this subject terribly.)

I thought I'd share something I posted about on the blog for the ENGL 222 class. There was some discussion on how serious of a crime would rape have been in the Middle Ages. This was brought up when discussing the Wife of Bath's Tale and whether the Knight got what he deserved or not. I said that I thought it would be a pretty serious crime but that I wasn't sure. So I decided to look it up, and unfortunately, it seems as though I was wrong.

There looks to be  lot of research that has been done on rape in the Middle Ages. just googling "rape in the middle ages" brings up numerous articles and books written on the subject.

I found this post during my search which summarizes the issue pretty well.

In the early Middle Ages, rape was considered theft (nice objectification and dehumanization of women’s bodies, huh?) Women were seen as lesser than men, and so there was not many instances of harsh punishment for rape. Rape was seen as a loss of a woman’s honor and not anything more than that.

Not all rapes were reported (as is still true today.) Rape was a crime that occurred in every social class.

Punishment of rape differed from different classes. Sometimes a man was justly punished with mutilation or death, but sometimes a man would not be punished as justly, often being let off with a mild sentence.

Women could even be imprisoned for the crime of falsely accusing someone. I’m assuming that false accusations occurred a very, very tiny percentage of the time, as it still true today and that women were being accused of false accusations simply for not having enough evidence against their rapist.

The article concludes with the statement that "patriarchal societies tend to 'sweep…under the carpet' instances of rape and sexual violence."

I was really disappointed to discover a lot of this information. For some reason, I assumed that the extreme emphasis on female virginity in this period (which is another sexist idea, by the way) would have made rape a severe crime.

Unfortunately, I guess I overestimated the goodness of men.

7 comments:

  1. Hi Lara,
    If you haven't seen this you might like it. It's from one of Prof. MB's links:
    http://inpress.lib.uiowa.edu/feminae/QuickSearch.aspx

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  2. Well, the first link I sent didn't go to things you could download. Here's a better link from Prof. MB's lists:

    http://medievalists.net/files/11020201.pdf

    Eckman, Zoë. "An Oppressive Silence: The Evolution of the Raped Woman in Medieval France and England." Medievalists.net. N.p., n.d. Web. 08 Oct. 2013. .

    I was going to play devil's advocate but it looks like the view of a man's world and patriarchal rules and a culture that legitimized and embellished rape were the norm.

    This is the most hopeful quote I could find (from the above link).

    Gravdal suggests that the fourteenth century legal definition of rape was derived
    from a thirteenth century literary concept which itself, in turn, was based upon definitions in twelfth century law books. With such a multi-layer history of precedents, it is easy to see why the concept of rape was so varied and so hard to define. However, it is clear to see that the trend was clearly moving away from the idea that rape was a sexual crime of passion towards the more modern idea that rape is a crime of domination and aggression. By the late fourteenth century, rape no longer was characterized as being a violent crime against a woman's body, nor was it about a girl's loss of virginity; it dealt more with notions of consent. While this is clearly an evolution towards the modern definition of rape, it also serves to decentralize the figure of the woman until all there is is an ambiguous question with no real way to present proof. Even today, the question of female consent emerges in rape trials, and it is just as difficult to prove today as it must have been in the Middle Ages.

    I disagree with your statement that you overestimated the goodness of men. Just because men weren't being punished for rape doesn't mean that the majority of men were out raping. It's a mixed bag. Alisoun from the MT and Alisoun the WOB both had some ability to consent, and my impression is that this wasn't the shocking part of the story. Emelye and the miller's wife and daughter in the Reeve's Tale lacked the ability to choose or consent. I guess I personally believe in love. Stories about happy couples that just live day to day together are boring. I bet they were boring then. I believe that people, men and women, want to love, and want to be loved. And that takes respecting your partner and seeing your partner as a person, not an object. To use a very cheesy political slogan that I strongly dislike, maybe OK couples (maybe in love, maybe just partners and friends) were the silent majority.

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    Replies
    1. Yeah I think my ending comment was a bit harsh. I read the article and felt a bit discouraged about everything in general because the article doesn't exactly give a good testament to the society. But I agree with your point that just because the rapists weren't being punished, that doesn't mean all men were raping.

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  3. Take a look at a book called The Last Duel. It covers the rape of a knight's wife by his competitor and overlord, as I can remember. The book is more of a historical fiction as it is told as a story instead of just relaying straight fact, but it is a good example of how things would have been handled at least when it comes to a woman of a higher estate. There is discussion of the incident, informal conduct on the part of her husband in handling the issue, and formal conduct in reference to court documents, etc. It's a quick read, and it gives a pretty good perspective.

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  4. This post, including comments has given me alot to think about. First of all, Damn those men! Why am I so stubbornly a feminist now?
    Anyways, it's sad to know that women were so idolized and enslaved (strong word, I know). Jessica you bring up an interesting point. It's always about class status. And of course the more money one has the more likely one would be heard.

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  5. Even women in higher classes did not get total satisfaction out of prosecution, if there even was prosecution, but there is a distinct difference between the lower and higher classes.

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  6. Thanks to everyone for commenting! And thank you for all of the links and recommendations to read. I'm much less experienced in researching and finding Middle Ages articles. I wasn't sure if the article I found was the best so I really appreciate you guys recommending me some things to read.

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