SOURCE: Quay, Sara E. “‘Lucrece the Chaste’: The Construction of Rape in Shakespeare's The Rape of Lucrece.” Modern Language Studies 25, no. 2 (spring 1995): 3-17.

In the following essay, Quay explores the patriarchal social constructs implicit in The Rape of Lucrece and examines how they “promote and permit” rape.

The notions of integrity and closure in a text are like that of virginity in a body. They assume that if one does not respect the boundaries between inside and outside, one is ‘breaking and entering,’ violating a property. As long as the fallacies of integrity and closure are upheld, a desire to penetrate becomes a desire for rape.

Jane Gallop, The Daughter's Seduction

Even there he starts: quoth he, ‘I must deflow'r …’

William Shakespeare, The Rape of Lucrece

On the level at which it is most frequently read, Shakespeare's The Rape of Lucrece is about an act of rape. The...