structures that legally considered women to be prop-
erty—owned by their fathers until they married and by
their husbands after—it is easy to see how Lucrece’s
behavior could, or should, suggest the correct behavior
of an English wife.
English women were expected to remain virginal
until marriage and to be “chaste” after marriage. This
meant that they were to engage in sexual relations only
with their husbands and behave at all times as though
they were chaste. Such behavior meant they were to
remain at home, enclosed and protected within the
walls of their home. They were also to be virtually
silent, speaking only when necessary and only on seri-
ous subjects. If their doors and mouths were literally
closed, people—including their husbands—assumed
that their vaginas were equally “closed.” Chaste sexual
behavior, therefore, was reinforced by chaste social
behavior.
The Rape of Lucrece begins with Collatine, Tarquin,
and their comrades camped outside Ardea, where they
amuse themselves by bragging about their wives’
beauty and chastity. Anxious to see whose boasts are
true, they ride off to Rome to check on each wife. Not
surprisingly, Lucrece is the only one engaged in chaste
activity; she is sitting at home spinning with her ser-
vants. This discovery not only allows Collatine to win
the competition but indicates how women were viewed
in patriarchal society: as objects consistently in need of
control. This scene also calls to mind the end of the
poem after Lucrece’s suicide. Her father and her hus-
band each declare he suffers more grief. But in the
course of this “grieving,” they both dwell upon their
“ownership” of Lucrece: one as the man who “gave her
birth,” the other as the man who “owned” her after
marriage. According to their arguments, Lucrece does
not “own” her own body. As a woman, she is denied a
self (agency) in patriarchal society. The only power
women retain is the power to kill themselves, and
when they do that, their right is challenged by the men
who own them.
The idea of male ownership of women permeates all
patriarchal societies, and is the impetus for reading
rape as a crime of power, not passion—and in pre-
modern England, as a property crime too. Thus, even a
man who does not have legal ownership of Lucrece—
Tarquin—feels that he can rape her with impunity.
Despite the rhetoric of Lucrece, which seems to indi-
cate that Tarquin raped Lucrece because her beauty
and chastity infl amed his lust, in truth, he rapes her
simply because he can. Moreover, by raping Lucrece,
Tarquin not only proves his (physical) male dominance
over her but also demonstrates his (social/political)
power over Collatine.
Her rape places Lucrece in a strange social position.
She knows that her society equates her chastity with
Collatine’s and their family’s honor. If she is “stained”
by Tarquin’s rape, she equally stains her husband’s
honor. Motivated by this, she would rather die than
dishonor her family, yet Tarquin has devised a way to
make her live with her shame. He threatens to kill her
and then an innocent servant whom he will place in
bed with her, swearing to her husband that he found
the two engaged in sexual intercourse. This is an inge-
nious and ironic plan: If Lucrece is raped, the violation
stains Collatine’s honor; if she has voluntarily slept
with a servant, the act primarily stains her honor. Inter-
estingly, Lucrece does not consider that her husband
might believe in the chastity that he has so proudly
boasted about—and proved—to his friends. This
bizarre situation regarding women in patriarchal
Roman society damns them not only if they are really
sexually loose, but also if a man says they are. Lucrece
refl ects on this when she ponders that, even though
she did not consent to Tarquin’s attack, she still feels
“stained” by it. Granted that women do feel “dirtied”
by the physicality of rape, Lucrece is obsessed by the
metaphorical “stain” upon her honor—and Collatine’s.
The only way she can remove the stain is to get her
husband to agree to avenge their honor and then kill
herself, the physical representation of dishonor, even
though she never consented to the dishonorable event.
Literally and socially, then, a totally chaste woman is a
totally dead one.
Shakespeare uses the colors red, white, and black as
images to describe Lucrece’s and Tarquin’s physical
and emotional states. Red and white allude to the early
modern period’s standard of female beauty: pale white
complexion and red lips and cheeks. Gems like rubies
and coral could double for the red color, while silver,
ivory, alabaster, and pearl for the white. Hair was gold,338 RAPE OF LUCRECE, THE