SOURCE: “Shakespeare and the Soil of Rape,” in The Woman's Part: Feminist Criticism of Shakespeare, edited by Carolyn Ruth Swift Lenz, Gayle Greene, and Carol Thomas Neely, University of Illinois Press, 1980, pp. 56-64.

In the following essay, Stimpson demonstrates that Shakespeare's portrayals of rape in works such as The Rape of Lucrece indicate his sympathy towards women; nevertheless, Stimpson concludes that Shakespeare uses rape as a plot device to emphasize the primacy of patriarchy and the loss that men endure when rape occurs within their own family.

Shakespeare's sympathy toward women helps to create an attitude toward rape that is more generous and less foolish than that of many of our contemporaries. He never sniggers and assumes that women, consciously or unconsciously, seek the rapist out and then enjoy the deed: brutal, enforced sex; the ghastly tmesis of the flesh. He never gives “proud lórds” the right...